Apartment Decision

Can anyone tell that we sometimes have problems making big decisions? That's why we're still making this apartment decision after months of looking.

To refresh your memory, we like the apartment we are in now but it has some downsides that we have decided are deal breakers. The 1st is the laundry situation. It costs basically an arm and a leg for each machine, and our loads ALWAYS have to be dried twice, sometimes 3 times. That's a real pain. We do like how the laundry room is just down the hall though. The real deal breaker though is the temperature. This apartment is very cold. It was kind of nice in the summer. It kept our electric bill low because we didn't have to use our air conditioner very much. But it became a real issue in the winter. I HATE cold, and that was the story of our entire winter. The heaters in here were not very effective, and not on any kind of thermostat, so we couldn't really leave them on when we were sleeping or not home. Additionally, they cost a ton of $. So we basically were paying a whole bunch and never really getting warm. We tried other things. We used our oven to heat us sometimes. We even bought a space heater. But the whole experience was pretty negative and we just don't want to go through it again. So we have decided to move.

Originally our lease here ended at the end of February, but we didn't find any place that we wanted to move to, so we extended 3 months in the hope of finding something better. I don't know the exact number but I know that we have looked at somewhere very near 40 apartments, and we have finally made up our minds. Good thing because we're sick of looking. We even started looking outside our ward at the end there because we couldn't find anything in our price range that was exactly what we wanted in our target area.

Ultimately, we have decided to move into the high rise that we were originally interested in back in February when we were looking. After seeing so many units, we have decided that it's a good bang for our buck in the area, and it pretty much has everything we want.

One of the biggest concerns that I had about that building is that the unit we liked faced southwest, and we will be paying for our own electricity, so it could be really expensive to cool in the summer, especially considering that it is almost 800 square feet. Well we went and looked at some units again with them today and we got to see a style of unit that we didn't see last time, and it's the one. It has a foyer with a coat closet; a nice, updated looking kitchen with a dishwasher, tons of cabinets, drawers! (we don't have a single one of those in the kitchen now), and even pantry-like cupboards for food; a very excellent sized-living room with wall sconces original to the building; AMAZING closet space; a really good sized bedroom; and the bathroom is not in the bedroom, which I like; laundry on site with multiple machines which hopefully function better than the ones here; and all utilities are included except electric-- that includes radiator heat!! This unit faces north, so it won't get the summer sun beating on it, and it will be much cheaper to cool. It is only on the 3rd floor so it doesn't have sweeping views, but the view is over the green space outside and is very pretty, so no complaints. While it is not quite as big as the southwest facing unit, it is still a respectable 750 square feet, and we are just thrilled. We are going to make our deposit on the place tomorrow. We will move in at the end of May. Oh my, I am so happy to be done apartment hunting!