The Joys of Apartment Living

We all dream to one day grow up, have a family and live in a big beautiful house with a white picket fence and a dog. Well at least that is my dream. For the last 4 years it has seemed to just be a fantasy. Why? I live in Southern California. The real estate market took a dump in 2008 and when it was supposed to be "the best time for us to buy a home" all we found were foreclosures that had ZERO potential to be anything but a complete loss for the bank. Every year my husband and I make the trek out around our area to see what's available in our budget. Let me tell you, we have a decent budget.....for every other state in our country with the exception of New York! Our first year out we saw upwards of 30 condos and town-homes all in the upper $200k price range and they were all garbage. We went into one foreclosure that literally had no kitchen. The residents took out all the cabinetry, sinks, appliances, they took the pedestal sink and the toilet out too! Oh but they left the dryer in the garage. (yea thanks buddy just what I wanted a broken dryer that I will have to pay someone to take away!) Darin visited a foreclosure that had a foot of water in the kitchen! WHAT? The banks were asking $275-290K for these properties! It seemed like a loss so we decided to just stay where we were. Our one bedroom apartment, with our pup.

We have been content in our apartment for the last 2 years. It's close to necessary conveniences like shopping and entertainment, pet friendly, relatively cheap (comparatively) and is a nice layout. Year three things took another turn. We had just decided that we were gonna stay, when out of no where some moron decides to have a party in our community center, has a fire in the fireplace but whoops they forgot to open the flue and up in flames it went. There went a lot of the amenities that we pay for, including our gym. Then they decided to INCREASE our rent! Um hello? We are loyal residents and we are staying here despite losing vital amenities and your gonna screw us We didn't have anywhere else to go, so we had no choice. (By the way this happened in February of 2010, its now the middle of Jan 2011 and the new clubhouse still isn't finished) Not only were we without clubhouse, but due to construction they had to close one of our 2 pools. When summer hit that was a nightmare. You got all the kids, plus the underage drinkers, and the elderly people all at one pool. They decided to send out a letter that each apartment was only allowed to have 2 guests attend the pool! WHAT?!?! The lease that I signed said nothing about people restrictions to use my amenities.

Not only this, but over the course of the summer we had some issues with our kitchen sink. It kept overflowing. We woke up on our anniversary to a gray water nightmare. Overflowed onto our counter and our apartment SMELLED! When I called the leasing office they told me that it wasn't an emergency and they would send someone as soon as they could. How is this filth not an emergency? It's a health hazard. Two and a half hours later someone showed up to snake the drain. YAY. "Happy Anniversary honey! Gift? Well I got you this nasty smell and a wait! How thoughtful!" 2 weeks later it happened again! This time it left an inch of water on our kitchen floor! Needless to say I left a not so nice message on the answering machine at the leasing office, because they were of course closed when I got home. Not only problems with the sink, but our dryer...oh it's a peach. It takes 3 hours to dry a load of towels. 3 HOURS! Jeans forget it. Not to mention the time our water heater broke and another time where a repair guy drilled a hole into our gas line!

Not only do we have issues with the physical things in our apartment, we have such wonderful neighbors. (Insert sarcasm here!) We have one neighbor who constantly bangs on his wall and his barking dag drives us nuts. Another has a child that seems to have an illness, she cannot leave their apartment without screaming at the top of her lungs while running to the staircase. They also let her knock on our door and run away, which in turn aggravates our dog. The people below us smoke cigarettes and have these little yappie dogs, so if we aren't having our noses invaded by the nasty smell its our ears drums being assaulted. The newest one however is the BEST. I don't know if they don't know they have neighbors below or if they don't care, but at all hours of the night you can hear them walking (no jumping) around the apartment, slamming doors, dropping what sounds like 25 pound dumb-bells and various other noises. It's enough to drive a person MAD!

Needless to say the time has come for us to move on and up and purchase a house. The hunt has begun. We have already seen three prospects in our price range with decent living conditions. I mean a GREAT step up from the missing cabinets and flooding. The process will be long, but I am sure that with enough faith and searching that we WILL find the home of our dreams!