A Tale of Three Cities

If you want a recipe for sore knees and ankles, exhaustion, a headache and a little heartache, I have a great one. It’s called: Trying to Find an Apartment in the Bay Area on Short Notice. I actually don’t recommend this recipe to anyone. 

My boyfriend and I drove to San Francisco last Friday. We arrived and went to his new workplace so that he could sign his contract. Then we were immediately off to an apartment showing. 

We spent most of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday looking for a place. We traveled back and forth between San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. We walked uphill and downhill scouting neighborhoods. We struggled to find parking. 

I had never been to an apartment showing where I wasn’t the only person looking at the place. All but one showing had multiple people. There were sometimes up to 30 other people. It was crazy. We thought we were prepared, having printed out credit reports/scores, copied driver’s licenses, gotten a letter of recommendation from Caltech housing, etc. But boy were we wrong. Trying to fill out rental applications was painstaking and time consuming. There was quite a lot of information that we just hadn’t thought of bringing. Thank goodness for smartphones. 

It’s incredible how many expensive apartments there are that I would never consider living in. I’ve never seen such funky places for rent. Apartments tucked up under the eaves where anyone taller than me would have to duck in certain parts of the room. Apartments with transparent-glass bedroom windows. Apartments with curtains instead of doors.  It’s amazing we found anything in the end. 

I absolutely fell in love with an incredible two bedroom apartment on the top of Twin Peaks. It had everything we wanted and more. It was spacious, had extra storage, a garage space, and amazing views. What it didn’t have was accessibility to the rest of the city.

The Twin Peaks apartment is in the row of apartments in the foreground 

 Fortunately, we found an apartment in Rockridge (Oakland) that seemed like a dream come true when we walked in. Decent sized one bedroom, carport space, a balcony, laundry on site, easy access to BART, and tons of restaurants and shopping within a couple minutes of walking. Some downsides include a badly patched hole in the bedroom door, a torn screen door, and some peeling cabinets. It’s not an amazing apartment by any means, but the location is terrific. We told the agent immediately that we’d take it. And fortunately we were the only people at the showing.

Our new apartment is on the right on the second floor

 We filled out the rental application and rushed over to the rental office only to discover that we’d need a cosigner. Since neither of us has been employed for at least a year at the jobs we’ll have when we move, they require a cosigner. They would not accept Tom’s offer letter from his new job stating his income. They would not accept a check for six month’s rent. All I could think was WTF?! I’m a grown woman, who until recently had a very good job. I have a bunch of money in savings. I haven’t had a cosigner since college. Bleck. 

First, we tried to have my brother (who was coincidentally in Oakland for the day) cosign for us and we dragged him to a notary to fill out the paperwork. Then it turned out that our cosigner had to own property. So we wound up staying for half of the day on Tuesday to meet up with my boyfriend’s mom in San Rafael so she could cosign for us. She totally saved us and we got the apartment in the end. 

Between Wednesday morning and this afternoon (Saturday), we’ve managed to contract movers, go wait at the DMV to change our address so we can get parking permits when we arrive in Oakland, say goodbye to most of our friends, and pack almost all of our apartment. 

We have one more day to finish up packing and then the movers arrive on Monday morning. After that we are off to Oakland! 

What I’m reading: I’ve hardly had a minute to read, but I’ve been focusing on finishing Private Life. I’m almost done with it. The Thorn Birds is still being neglected, but I’ll soon have time to finish it as well.