Housing Hunt

Since Easter I've been looking for another place to live. The house I'm living in is owned by a couple who recently returned from Ecuador. That changes the ambiance here. In addition they are planning on selling the house and gave me until June 1st to move out. I have a friend who also needs to be out of her current living situation by June 1st so we began the housing hunt.

I've visited some interesting apartments. One I saw last week was billed as a two bedroom however you had to go through one of the bedrooms to get from the kitchen to the living room. That doesn't work. There are lots of older homes and brownstone apartment buildings in the area where we are looking. That can mean some tiny bedrooms (does a double bed really fit in there?) and some small closets. Those that seemed liveable often didn't have room for our 3 bikes. (I'm the one with 2.)

In early May I visited a duplex (the ground floor of an old house) that had decent sized bedrooms, large closets, a pantry off the kitchen, and a huge front closet that could hold everything that didn't fit elsewhere. It was a little dirty but a good cleaning would get it sparkling. The bedrooms were painted an awful pink or green but the owner said we could paint those. While I was in France my future housemate went to see it and liked it as well. We understood that we had a verbal agreement and I was to call when I returned from my trip. I was expecting to be painting and moving this weekend. However, the owner rented it to someone else out from under our noses. I guess we learned it is always good to put down a deposit.

Saturday we visited another apartment that we both liked. It's in a great location and there is a storeroom in the basement for our bikes. The problem is that it is owned by a rental agency and since both of us have lived overseas for at least a couple of years our "rental history" isn't exactly the classic situation. My income and my credit score aren't classic either. One of my tasks today has been to round up documentation to back up what I'm saying and to pray that God gives us favor in their eyes.