Today I spent a few hours helping my friend Tara look for a new place to live. We drove around to a few different places based on websites and books for apartment hunting. My favorite is finding a place that looks good in the magazine and when you drive by it looks just OK. Then you read the reviews about the apartment on a web site and it is all about drug dealers and porn stars. Tara brought up a good point that there needs to be a non-biased review of apartments similar to hotels. Sure there are the amateur reviews, but professional reviewers would help balance out the online nonsense. I firmly believe that most people only write about negative things, and rarely do they write positive reviews.
Maybe all apartments really are that bad. I’ve had pretty good luck with the places I’ve lived over the past 22 years of renting, but none of them are stellar 100% scores. Sure some were better and some were worse, but it wasn’t until recently I’ve been thinking more and more I am over renting and really want to buy. Don’t get your hopes up because there is no way I can afford anything remotely nice where I live, but it is a nice thought to have a single family home to call my own where the annoying neighbors are at least on the other side of the fence and not just on the other side of the wall.
It’s a matter of weeks before I need to decide if it is time to move again. I hate the thought of me having to go through the process that Tara just went through. Ultimately, she decided to stay put despite the challenges of her current apartment. It reminds me of my many abortive attempts to move out of my last apartment and makes my head hurt.
More on moving soon (hopefully good “I’ve won the lottery!” news, but we shall see..)