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House Hunters: Dejected Frustration Edition

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  • #16
    Quoth morgana View Post
    And once again, I find that I have been extremely fortunate . . .

    I'm moving this weekend, into a two-bed, two-bath apartment with fireplace and its own washer/dryer. I only looked at two complexes, and the only problem I had with this one is having to spend six weeks on a waiting list.
    One thing I hated about military moves - you had to find something that was available immediately, you had to find it quickly, and you were in a city, state, or even country you'd never been to before. So you have no idea what areas to look in (high crime, low crime, good or bad schools, ritzy or affordable, older or new development, etc. And you're only authorized a little extra money to help cover motels for a very, very short time. You grab what you can, as quickly as you can, and hope for the best.

    Madness takes it's toll....
    Please have exact change ready.

    Comment


    • #17
      That is why we took post housing when we first got to Alaska. the Army screwed up and never assigned us a sponsor to help with arriving OCONUS. Of course, half the Army said hubby was still single.

      Comment


      • #18
        Everyone had their break, and nice & comfy with popcorn and daquiries? I'll add a few more tales of Abodes of the Strange.

        Ok, we'll again skip mundane examples creative advertising, creative math used for measurements, and even disasters in decorationg. Here are a few more that stand out.

        When looking to buy, rather than rent, we extended the range of what we might look at, since as an owner, you can change a lot more than you can as a renter. One place was a very old house, in the historical section of town. It had been cut into three tiny apartments in such a way that putting it back together as one house wouldn't have been terribly hard (but it would take all three parts). Somehow, I couldn't see anything good coming of buying a house, then kicking a sweet little old lady out of her home of 30 years - Karma is a bitch.

        We saw one Victorian house that had been restored - not just in a Victorian style, but a style I can only describe as Victorian Bordello Red flocked wallpaper, extravagantly tacky chandeliers, and furnishings to match. Even without the furnishings, every inch of wallpaper, paint, carpet & fixtures screamed "ladies of the evening".

        There were lots of houses we didn't want, but we actually encountered one that didn't want us. First, when we went there alone to look at the outside, huby was very, very carefully backed out the narrow drive - and hit a large tree. I swear that tree had to have inched over for that to happen Cost us $200 fo fix our car, even creeping at about 2 mph. Then, when we met the real estate agent there, it took her about half an hour to get into the lock box on the door (I think it was a series of errors over the code by several people).

        I can't think of any other places where the whole house was extremely memorable, but bits and pieces from various houses have stuck themselves into the deepest bits of my brain, here are some highights (not all from the same house, fortunately).

        The room that had carpeting on the walls (we hope it was soundproofing for some sort of musical practices, not to make a "padded room"

        The bits of granite tombstones in the backyard

        The built in cigarette lighter (much like ones in older cars) in the bathroom (this house had been some sort of a "showcase - state of the art" house in the early 50's).

        Same house as above also had an intercom system, with speakers in every room including, yep, the bathroom.

        The fireplace in the master bathroom.

        The bathtub faucet in the shape of a swan.

        The bedroom that had an unexplained misty ball of white on the photo

        The main bathroom that was actually off the kitchen (ok, there was a tiny little square that could, if stretching it, be labeled a vestibule or something in between, but really, it was off the kitchen. Note, this apartment only had the one bathroom.

        The small bedroom with baby wallpaper - and a built in shower in the corner, not even the all-in-one-piece modern one with door, but an older, tiled wall, with shower curtain shower.

        And I'll end with one amusing story from my childhood. We moved once when my older sister was a teen, and we went looking at houses with our parents. One house still had an old 1950's bomb shelter in the backyard, in perfect condition. Otherwise, the house wasn't memorable. My sister tried everything she could think to convince our parents to rent that house (which they didn't). Come to find out, she'd decided that since the house only had two bedrooms, and we did NOT do well sharing a bedroom, eventually she'd have been able to convince our parents to let her use the bomb shelter as a bedroom - making it her own apartment, and easy for sneaking in and out of on Saturday nights

        Madness takes it's toll....
        Please have exact change ready.

        Comment


        • #19
          Quoth 24601 View Post
          That is why we took post housing when we first got to Alaska. the Army screwed up and never assigned us a sponsor to help with arriving OCONUS. Of course, half the Army said hubby was still single.
          We were never stationed anywhere that had less than a six month to a year waiting list to get into base housing, so you still had to fnd an apartment. Some places had waiting lists so long it was a gamble whether your name would come up before you transferred.

          I lived in housing once, when daughter was small. We got in after six months, because we only qualified for the older, substandard housing (all two bedrooms). If you qualified for the newer housing (3 & 4 bedrooms) you had a 2 year wait.

          But at that time, in the Navy, to qualify for a 3 bedroom over a 2 bedroom, you had to either have 3 children (and being pregnant with a third did not count, you couldn't even get on the list til after the baby was born), or if you had 2 children, you could get on the list for a 3 bedroom once one child was six (if they were different sexes) or once one child was 12 (if they were same sex).

          Madness takes it's toll....
          Please have exact change ready.

          Comment


          • #20
            Quoth morgana View Post
            And I want one of those tiny houses to go SCA camping in.
            For SCA camping, I'd totally go with a Yurta, instead.

            ^-.-^
            Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

            Comment


            • #21
              Quoth Merriweather View Post
              We were never stationed anywhere that had less than a six month to a year waiting list to get into base housing, so you still had to fnd an apartment. Some places had waiting lists so long it was a gamble whether your name would come up before you transferred.

              I lived in housing once, when daughter was small. We got in after six months, because we only qualified for the older, substandard housing (all two bedrooms). If you qualified for the newer housing (3 & 4 bedrooms) you had a 2 year wait.

              But at that time, in the Navy, to qualify for a 3 bedroom over a 2 bedroom, you had to either have 3 children (and being pregnant with a third did not count, you couldn't even get on the list til after the baby was born), or if you had 2 children, you could get on the list for a 3 bedroom once one child was six (if they were different sexes) or once one child was 12 (if they were same sex).

              The wait at Benning was ~ a year (and crappy housing) but Alaska has PCS season (starts in April ending in early October). Unless you are single and they are flying you up, you will NOT move in winter there. This makes it easy to tell when housing is opening up. Hubby was in a unit that was just standing up so they had a set amount of houses set aside, but we knew how unusual it was to have only a 3 day wait. There also was a lack of housing in Anchorage that post housing knew about as anything that lower enlisted could afford was black listed due to the area. There was a whole empty 8plex across from us that K9 MPs used to practice searching and clearing until it was needed. Alaska is a whole different world though.

              We didn't have any kids at that point but we were pre approved for a 3 bedroom unit upon official conformation of pregnancy. Ft Richardson housing was nice though, in fact they were working on building new and tearing down all the old stuff from the '50's. Everyone was getting a garage.

              Comment


              • #22
                Sorry I haven't been able to comment on these horror stories, but I've been working.

                I do have news though. Wish us luck -- we found a very nice place for only $39 more than what our rent will rise to here where we're at. We've both looked at it, we both like it, and we're putting in an application tomorrow.

                It has more space than we know what to do with, including 3 bedrooms, 2 and a half baths, a garage, a tiny front porch and a little back patio, room to plant a few things, a fireplace, plenty of storage space, and a much nicer kitchen than here.

                Basically, the price is still high, but the price is justified at that place. Best of all, it's on a main road which will be quickly plowed in the winter should it snow. That's important for him because of his job at the hospital.

                *crosses fingers*
                Drive it like it's a county car.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Quoth 24601 View Post
                  Our realtor SUCKED, didn't make any effort to help us, ignored our wants (not in Anchorage, yard for dog, 2 bedrooms). The one place she showed us as a Hobbit house, hubby (6'3") had to duck under the ceiling fans or be hit in the head, plus it was filthy. The next house had one small heater in the living room and that was it...in Alaska.

                  The house we ended up in was nice but had a weird living room (long and narrow) and oh yeah, turns out she's the agent selling it (found that out at the closing).
                  My guess as to the reason she ignored your wants? She wasn't the listing agent on any houses that met your wants, and (in order to get both sides of the commission) only showed you houses where she was the listing agent.
                  Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    No, she told us from the beginning that "I'll treat you like my kids". We were both working in Anchorage but didn't want to live there. SHE decided that we shouldn't/wouldn't want to do the drive (hour into town from Wasilla). I finally brew up on her when she said she was too tired to drive us to look at any places. The VA thing was just the final straw with her, and why she is/was black listed.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Wow, my hubby and I have been really lucky. We found our first house fairly quickly, and while it was neither in a good neighborhood nor in great condition, it was affordable and only 2 blocks from where I worked at the time. We redid every floor in the place (Rainbow shag carpet?! Complete with oil stains from a motorcycle repair... Let's do wood laminate.), put up insulation and drywall, and gutted the kitchen (Orange countertops with scorch marks, oven that wouldn't close, cabinets without doors).

                      Our second (current) house we stumbled upon by accident. Our realtor took us out for the second batch of walk throughs, and after an unexciting line up, we spotted an open house. We had extra time, so figured what could it harm? We LOVED it. We call it a Mary Poppins house- practically perfect in every way.

                      Now we just have to find someone to take the old one off our hands. Any takers? I thought not.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Another update.

                        There is a problem, which I discovered today although honestly I should have seen it coming. Our new place is located smack next door to one of the two locations of the president's favorite barbecue restaurant. We were taking things over this morning and the smells wafting over from there were driving me insane. And I hate barbecue. I'm going to have to go over there and try them out and see if I still hate barbecue. Fortunately there is a well-worn path connecting my new place to the restaurant.

                        Also, it would appear that our predecessors at the new place were hippies. We checked the mailbox and got an armload of their mail -- for about five different people, and involving such concerns as the Maine Organic Gardeners and Farmers Association and a local animal rescue shelter. I also happened to meet a neighbor last night while taking things over, who welcomed me and noted that her little dog -- which was then peeing on our small scrap of front lawn -- had always hated the dogs that lived there with the people we were replacing. It is a well known fact here where I live (and we know our hippies here) that hippies are marked by a propensity for packing into rental housing -- sometimes dozens at a time -- and the presence of dogs. Therefore, I inspect the mail and remember the dogs and conclude: hippies.
                        Drive it like it's a county car.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          While I don't dispute your conclusion, there are many reasons for mail to a lot of different names might hit one location.

                          I moved into my house last year, and the owner had the place for six, himself. He lied about living here and had his brother's family here, instead. I'm still getting mail for him, his brother, his brother's wife, and at least two other people who either never lived here or lived here most of a decade ago.

                          ^-.-^
                          Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Quoth Merriweather View Post
                            There was another place, an old house that had been made into 3 apartments (upstairs, downstairs & basement). It had been redone recently, and was gorgeous, one of the nicest places I've ever been into, from luxury kitchen to repro period light fixtures. Unfortunately, the square footage that the owner had sworn was for the one apartment had to be for at least two of them combined, if not all. It was just too small for us. I'd like to think I wouldn't have let the other thing keep me from renting it - that the house used to be a funeral parlor. At least the apartment we were interested in wasn't the basement apartment - that used to be the morgue
                            Wow....I'm not sure I'd be horrified or fascinated at the reno that would be involved for something like that. One would think THAT place would be haunted
                            https://www.youtube.com/user/HedgeTV
                            Great YouTube channel check it out!

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                            • #29
                              Quoth telecom_goddess View Post
                              One would think THAT place would be haunted
                              Um, from what I know of the people that believe in ghosts, one universal truth is they haunt where they lived and/or died,where the soul/spirit left the body, not where they were prepped for burial 3-4 days after death....
                              Honestly.... the image of that in my head made me go "AWESOME!"..... and then I remembered I am terribly strange.-Red dazes

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Quoth BlaqueKatt View Post
                                Um, from what I know of the people that believe in ghosts, one universal truth is they haunt where they lived and/or died,where the soul/spirit left the body, not where they were prepped for burial 3-4 days after death....
                                yeah but back in the day some people were buried when they weren't dead yet
                                https://www.youtube.com/user/HedgeTV
                                Great YouTube channel check it out!

                                Comment

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