Members bikehorn Posted March 16, 2006 Members Share Posted March 16, 2006 because we can only live on campus for one year(and it's only worth it for one year anyway) my friends and i are getting a house to live in next year. i am living with 4 of my closest friends...3 guys(alex, jay and andrew) and a girl(monique). most of the time, first year students have their group and house picked out and signed by about the beginning of february. around the time we began looking for a place, monique's parents come up to visit and decide they'll buy a house, put it in monique's name but retain control of it and rent it to us. the thing is, most student housing deals offer May 1st occupancy and when i heard the plan, i couldn't help but call BS on that plan mentally. just seemed like a crapshoot to think that they would pick out a house, make an offer, get a loan approved by the bank and all that other rigmarole plus draw up a lease agreement for us to sign and hand over tenancy in 3 months. it could happen, sure, but that was only if everything went to plan, and i knew it never does. i didn't strongly express my skepticism to everyone because at the time it seemed unjustified...i mean, nobody waltzes in offering to buy a house and rent it out to us if they aren't serious about it, right? the result was that everyone gave up house hunting since it was assumed that they'd be buying a place. on my own time i kept tabs on backup places to rent, just in case(or in my mind, more like when) the deal fell through. well, as i predicted back in january, they waffled around for a long time and nothing concrete happened. i got impatient and so did jay...so we brought up the idea to the others that this whole thing was probably not going to happen and that we should once again look at renting. so we went out yesterday and looked at a two houses for rent by the same landlord. both feature similar leases and are both $320 a month per tenant assuming a group of 5, plus heating, electricity, phone and internet. this puts it at about $370 each monthly. both houses were nice, but i didn't have to think twice when i decided the first house was the better option. unfortunately, i had no backup. everyone else wanted the second place because it appears newer(i.e. it was cheaply renovated about 12 years ago) versus the first place which didn't really feature any such renovations. the first house was probably 140% of the second's square footage, and had a kitchen that was larger than the kitchen and dinette of the second place combined. there is also no ground floor in the second house, rather, it's a split-level house so you have to go up a narrow, steep set of stairs the minute you enter the door. it was a damn pain for 5 people to get inside simultaneously. there is no reasonable place to put your shoes except at the top of the stairs, but in the soggy wintry weather present about 2/3 of the academic year, that means the stairs are going to be dirty, slippery and wet all the damn time. say what you will but i don't think there's anything dignified about going up a long, narrow and steep set of stairs and nearly hitting my head on the doorframe at the top just to enter...and i'm 5'11". the bedrooms are all nice, although the top two are accessed by an even more inconvenient [bare plywood!!!] loft staircase which requires you to lean sideways at the top. there also is less room in general to put things and more importantly i don't want to split one bathroom between 5 people when there are two bathrooms in the first house. the second house has, in its favour, laundry facilities, but you have to walk around the outside of the building to a part of the house rented out to some other people...the downstairs guys. they are a pretty quiet bunch i'm told, but i don't think i'm unjustified in saying i'd like to avoid having to live above people in a house if i can. we all talked about how we wanted to have kickass parties...granted, a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things but this house is going to make it hard to party...which is contrary to the logic previously used to describe what we wanted in a place. and nobody sees my point that the first house, which, while not as architecturally amusing, is probably a much better deal even if it is a little more typically "student". there's a lot more house for the same rent. i guess i'm just going to sign the lease anyway. i hardly have a choice anymore and i'm just glad to have a house to begin with. there really isn't anyone else i could house with at this point anyway and i'd be backing out on my closest friends. i just think they're shooting themselves in the foot because of some cheap wall paneling and bay windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Perfessor Posted March 16, 2006 Members Share Posted March 16, 2006 Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. There is always next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ToeJamFootball Posted March 16, 2006 Members Share Posted March 16, 2006 yeah, just bags the biggest room Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted March 16, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted March 16, 2006 Why do you hate cheap wall paneling and bay windows so much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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