The Saga Of Renting A New Place

A Townhome

Photo by Maria Ziegler on Unsplash

I’m writing this because

Terry Freedman

of

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature and life

told me I should.

The factory of the future

It was over here on his story about potentially losing his phone number that we started chatting in the comments section about what I’m going to talk to you about today.

Years ago, my Mom and I sold our house. It was getting to be too much to take care of and it needed some TLC with some problems. We didn’t have the money, so we decided to sell it. We had many trials and tribulations with the house and our neighbors over the years. When I was preparing to write this story, I wrote down in my spreadsheet all of the issues we had with neighbors. I couldn’t believe the list I came up with. We lived there for 21 years and the amount of problems and issues we had was unbelievable. I hope to write about some of it.

Let’s turn the clock back for a few minutes first. When we decided to sell the house, we needed a Realtor. I had done some research and decided to call a woman Realtor who was located close to us. When we started talking about selling to our Personal Banker at our bank, she suggested someone else. She was always great with things we needed. We decided to call her Realtor friend. He was fantastic. He came over one day and talked with us. He was going on vacation for a week but said he would list our place once he returned. The first day it was listed, three people came to visit it. We had to vacate while they looked, so we went out to dinner and then went to the library. The next day, he called us and told us we had two offers. He met with us the next day and we took the highest offer. So it sold in one day. The closing took 30 days.

We needed to find a rental. We used the same Realtor to help us find rentals within our price range. He drove us around to several different places. Some were disasters. This one place was located on a golf course. The apartment was on the ground floor. There were two golf balls on the counter in the kitchen. Upon further inspection, the counter tops were painted an orange color. Who paints a counter top? The carpet was indoor/outdoor carpeting and it was coming up in a few areas. What would have been my bathroom was awful. The toilet was so small. I sat down (with my clothes on, ha ha) and it felt like I was sitting on the floor. It was so low to the ground. The sink had rust in it.

Then, one day I was looking at the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and I found a property located in our city. I didn’t know the street, in fact, I had never heard of it. Once I looked it up on Google Maps, I saw that it was located only 2 miles and 5 minutes from us. We drove over and took a look at it with our Realtor. We decided we wanted it.

In order to get the place, our Realtor had to take our application to the other Realtor’s office. Multiple people were vying for rentals, so he had to speed to make it there in time. He told us that the receptionist told him he had just made it because two other people were interested and she told them that they had to get the application to her quickly. So we got the place.

We were now dealing with the Realtor who was renting the place. The woman was hard to deal with. She was so happy that we got the place but she did a lot of stuff we didn’t like. We didn’t know what television, phone, and Internet service were available. She told us, she didn’t know. She didn’t offer to find out for us or anything. I did some searching online and eventually found a website for the subdivision.

They were on Dish Network for Internet, Phone and Television. We were on AT&T for landline phone, Brighthouse Networks for television, and Earthlink for Internet. So now we had to cancel all of them. But we wanted to port our phone number over since we had used it for years. We needed a landline phone for the new place right away because I didn’t have a cell phone at the time. When I asked Dish about porting our number over, they said it would take up to 10 days. I only had 1 day, so they said they couldn’t do it that quickly. So we lost our number that we had for 25 years. Now we had to notify all the people who had that number. This included: doctors, dentists, electric, gas, family, banks, emergency contacts, etc.

The day we were supposed to get the keys to the townhome, the Realtor lady didn’t show up at the time she told us. That day was a scorcher with temperatures going into the 100s. We had parked in the driveway and were standing on the front stoop. A guy down the street kept looking at us. He probably wondered why we kept standing there. It got so bad that we had to get back into the car and turn it on so we could get air conditioning. We did this at least 4 times.

She arrived about 1 hour late. She told us she called us but she said I guess that wasn’t a cell phone. That was our landline. She was calling to tell us that she forgot the key to the place. Once we went to the door, she said she would give us the key that was in the lock box. She told us she could meet us to give us the other key or we could drive to her office. We opted to drive to her office even though it was 10 miles away. We didn’t trust she would show up. We all went into the townhome and did a walk-through. She talked to us for a while in the kitchen area. She asked me if I ever found out who the Internet, Phone, and TV was.

And now we were onto our next rental adventure.

Conclusion

I have 6 stories about living in the townhome. Two involve a neighbor and her relative, one involves a guy I came to know, and three involve our landlord. Wait til you hear these stories!

Until next time, happy reading.

-Matt