House Hunting

Well, I don't have any pictures this time, because Jenny has the camera. After getting an offer on our house, we decided it was high time to start looking for a new place. I had to move my lab up to Ann Arbor June 2, and Jenny was invited to spend the month of June in Utah with my family and also Alice, Jenny's sister. So, I am a bachelor up here for now, trying to figure out what we are going to do for an apartment.

Where we thought we were moving is into the on-campus married housing. It's a little more expensive (~$1300), but it's within a mile of my building and all the utilities are paid (including the washer and dryer). The apartments are a little run down, but not too bad, and there is a large LDS community that lives there (an entire married student ward). Well, when I talked to the head of housing a couple months ago, he said there was absolutely no problem for us to get in. Well, we waited to hear back....and waited.... and waited. Finally, last week they said they definitely do NOT have an apartment for us in July, but the couldn't say about August. Our house is selling July 7, and we really would like to have a place to live. So, I started looking around. I ran into a guy who is in ME and also LDS, and he told me about a Co-op just south of town. You pay $10k to get in, and then rent is $600/month. Much better than $1300. So, I got an application, filled it all out, and then found out there is at least a 9 month waiting list to get in... Oh well.

It ends up in Ann Arbor there are not a lot of three bedroom apartments close to North Campus (where my building is). But, just yesterday I found a nice, large 3 bd, 2 bath apartment less than 2 miles from my office. It's normally $1200 a month, but they have a bunch of empty apartments, so they are giving a deal for $200 off per month, along with 1 month free. I also found some coupons from the rental agency, so I can get the application fee cut in half, and some other stuff. I'm going to go look at it today. It's all on a single floor (a much better layout than the on-campus stuff), it has a dishwasher (on-campus doesn't), it has two pools and a weight room, it's two blocks from where Jeffrey would go to school, two blocks from the shopping center we will shop at, and two blocks from the library. The only downside is that it doesn't have a place for a washer and dryer... So, do you think we should do it anyway? At $900 a month, adding in $250 a month for utilities (a high figure, I hope), we still are saving $150/month over the on campus housing. We could use that to pay for laundry if we wanted.

Well, I will keep looking, and see if there is anything else out there, but this looks like the best deal for me. Now I just need to convince Jenny that she doesn't have to have a washer and dryer in the apartment. (I've already got Jeffrey hooked when I said we would have two swimming pools...)