The Great Apartment Search

My sister-in-law recently accepted a new job in our area, so we spent the weekend helping her search for an apartment here in town, along with my other sister-in-law and five year old neice.

Since we live in a large, metropolitan area with literally hundreds of apartment buildings, it should be easy, right? Go to any grocery store and there are free books the size of the Oxford English Dictionary listing all the possibilities. Choose a price range, an area, the ammenities you want, check out a couple for comparison and voila, you have a new home. Yeah. Right. In Fantasyland maybe.

In the real world, you load everyone in the car and drive to your first choice, try to figure out the code to punch into the call box so that you can actually get into the building(God forbid they would list the leasing office number on a plaque and make it easy for you, after all you are only trying to give them your money), fill out a form, collect floorplans, go over pricing, give them your license, take a guided tour of every nook and crany of the building, mention you have a dog....uh oh. Danger Will Robinson!!!!!!!

A dog. What breed? How many pounds? Now your choices are limited. No big dogs. No problem, he weighs only 10 pounds. No aggressive breeds. Safe again, he's a Yorkie, but he thinks he's a doberman, does that count? No apartments above the second floor in this building. Why? Apparently, that is all their little doggie bladders can handle. Oh, and then there are the additional fees, including monthly rent for FIdo. Guess the little guy will have to stop slacking off and go out and get a job.

You have a car too? More monthly fees! You want heat, water, air conditioning in the summer? That'll cost you. You didn't think the astronomical rent covered any of that, did you?

On to the other choices in the book, but we were getting smarter. We'd pull up and I would hop out (avoiding the whole circus clowns out of the minicar compounded by a carseat thing), crack the secret leasing office code, cover the "doggie issue", then give the others the thumbs up or down signal. Forms, floorplans, pricing (adding in generous amounts for both dog and car), license, tour and out.

This building allowed dogs up to the fifth floor (apparently, the dogs living here had bigger bladders), that building allowed them on any floor (I don't even want to think about the size of their bladders!). This building had an underground garage, that building had a separate but attached garage and the one building had the garage across the street(single women returning home late at night concerned about their safety were encouraged to park in the tow away zone in front of the building. They won't really tow you as long as you are gone by six a.m.)

Some places had walk-in closets that were bigger than the living room/dining room area, some had closets so small you would have to go to the additional storage area offered on each floor (for a fee, of course) to choose your outfit for the next day and hope you could fit it into the closet without crushing it, and some had two or three closets, but spread out througout the apartment, offering a different kind of challenge.

We were beginning to feel like Goldilocks. Did the apartment exist that was "just right"? Up, down, in, out. They all began to blur together after awhile. Which one had the doggie park? Was it the one on the second floor with the balcony that overlooked the garbage bins, or the one on the fifth floor with the hallway that smelled like cabbage? Maybe it was the one that had the rooftop pool the size of a standard bathtub?

While we were trying to sort it all out, weighing things like square footage, proximity to work, safety issues and price, my neice was using her own system. Food. Most of the leasing offices offered bowls of mints, which she sampled freely, determined to get one of each color. Some offered cookies, while still others had beverages. (FYI, the pink mints tasted good, but the white ones are the best, and most of the cookies are butter and not really worth trying. They are on the dry side).

Feet aching, heads spinning we finally cried, "Uncle" and came home. And that is when the e-mails and phone calls began. Special pricing was suddenly being offered, there were deals to be had. There was no respite to be had from "The Great Apartment Search". And just think, if she was anything like her brother, my sister-in-law would move every few years and allow us to share in the fun multiple times. Now I remember why we live in a house.