I am looking forward to the new apartment. Sometimes we get so comfortable where we are, we become blind to the problems it has.
This isn’t to complain about where I am living. It is better to talk about the home hunting process and its pitfalls. The biggest problem that I see is deception. People have a right to make their offerings look the best they can, but they don’t have a right to be deceptive about it.
For example, the first house showed photos of one of their apartments at a location that looked beautiful. However, they didn’t have any pictures of the second apartment so I figured it was similar. I was wrong. It was terrible, and the place was smaller than they claimed it was. Yesterday I visited another place that they said was the 1st Floor and they showed a house. When I got there they led me to the side of the house and lead me into a basement apartment with a low ceiling. It felt claustrophobic. The pictures were of new construction but there were several unacceptable things they didn’t show in the pictures. They had pillars that were ugly and metal in the middle of the room, and the lens was distorted to make it appear to be bigger than it was. It took 2 minutes to see everything and I knew when we walked down the side of the house I was already unlikely to like this.
Both of these people followed up with me the next day through the webpage and email. I told them that I found a better place and thanked them for the tour. I also canceled another visit yesterday because after more research it was in the same neighborhood as the first and I didn’t realize it was a block away from a fire department. Since I am sensitive to noise, that would be irritating to me to live next to. They should have not put a quiet neighborhood because a fire department truck isn’t a quiet neighborhood.
Probably to some people, these complaints sound like first-world problems. However, at this price, I expected more. Ideally, I would like to not move, and so I am thinking of long-term possibilities in living in a location. If you can’t accept its initial issues, then just like a relationship you probably shouldn’t get involved in one.
It is remarkable to me how much time it takes to look for a decent apartment. I have probably spent a week looking at properties 40 hours and most of them are trash. I don’t understand places that don’t list the address of the apartment. People want to know where they are going to be. Other places don’t have any photos which means a big Nope from me. If they can’t bother to post some photos, then they don’t think that they have a competitive property. Many properties also outright lie on their description but you have to be familiar with the neighborhood to recognize it. For example, one apartment building points out it is a block away from police, but it is not a safe neighborhood and a stranger once tried to start a fight with me in it. That is a story for another article.
I know I will find a place and the process is certainly an adventure.