a new place to live

well not yet, but soon enough.

our landlord asked us if we were staying next year at the beginning of february. if you don't live in boston, maybe you don't understand why this is bad. you see, just about everyone in boston has the same lease. people only move in and out on september 1. so our landlord asked us if we wanted to stay next year when we were only 4 months into our current lease. this is ridiculous! she always asks in march--which i've not heard of boston landlords asking this early either--but february was kind of a shocker.

when march came around, she said it was time to make our decision and let her know if we wanted to sign a new lease or not. because we have lived there 4 years now, we called her on march 15th and had a chat and asked if we could have more time. she agreed to give us one more month.

10 days later, she decided she changed her mind and asked if she could photograph our place. we told her no, we had agreed to talk to her on the 15th of april and we had not made our decision. a couple days later, we got an email saying basically TOO BAD. she had listed our apartment and had four appointments to show it the following day. a "fight" ensued, but we are now glad we're not staying because we found out she's using one of those shady comm ave realty places that rents to predominantly bu and bc kids. well, i don't want to live with undergrads. last year she used this agency to fill the apartment above us and it was a nightmare for the 3 months those kids lived there. then they left--one couldn't pay his bills/rent, and the other decided to take a spring semester fellowship of some kind, so now there are adult subletters. but i can't handle a year living with parties that go until 4:30am on a tuesday night, the yelling, open doors onto the stairwell with big football get-togethers and everything else we dealt with for those 3 months.

i guess now we're not too disappointed we're moving. we're just pissed at our landlord for going behind our backs. shame on me for assuming that calling to talk to her as adults and tenants would be worthwhile. why didn't she just tell us to begin with that she's using a realty company now and had a date she had to let them know? why didn't she just say no? we are great tenants, really--pay our rent on time every month, lived there 4 years, lee even helped her get the zipcars in our lot and gave her information on green points to get retroactive green certification for the building. i could go on here, but i won't. she didn't have to be a bitch.

so this week, we've fast tracked our research into buying property. i'll keep you posted, but we've already spoken to mortgage people and went back to a realtor lee met last year. yikes, this is not going to be fun.