The 2007 Student Affairs Job Hunt

In Medias Res #24: The 2007 Student Affairs Apartment Hunt

Well, that was a long weekend.

I tried to make things easy on myself by staying with a friend who lives just outside of my new town. I figured I would get some sleep and then drive in early the next morning to start my search. Which is exactly what I did. Except I failed to realize that I was traveling with the oncoming traffic into the city, and about five minutes from my exit the traffic stopped. As such, I started my day late.

But that was okay because the first few apartments on my schedule were keys with a code in a lockbox. That’s right dear reader, the property manager didn’t come to open the apartment for me. He just told me where to find keys so I could break in. Needless to say all of these apartments were underwhelming. One of them was a little bit bigger than some of the other units I looked at, but the neighborhood was a little uncomfortable and the apartment itself needed a lot of work.

So I moved on. I met my next appointment and the apartments he showed me looked like sets for a movie about intravenous drug users. And he was late. Call me anal retentive, but this is your job. I would never be late for a meeting, and if there were unavoidable circumstances I would at least let people know I was going to be late to the best of my ability. Whatever the case, I was not about to rent a crackhouse. You can get those for free.

At this point it was 9:15 and I had exhausted half of the internet leads I had set up. I decided to just start driving around and looking for rent signs. This proved fortuitous. First, I ran into a rental office right in between the two neighborhoods I wanted to live in. The realtor was really nice, showed me a lot of units, and the day was finally starting to look up. I could actually see myself living in one of these places.

I went to my next appointment and again the realtor was late. This time by more than an hour. You may be asking yourself why I waited so long? Well, I really wanted to see the apartment and I became enchanted with the neighborhood as I walked around waiting for her. When she finally showed up and let me see the unit, I walked in and out. The floor plan was horrible.

So I returned to driving. I called one sign and they told me to come to their office. Where I was greeted by a loud and emphatic, “How old are you?” This was announced dripping with condescension, and about five minutes later when the property manager explained to me she couldn’t even show me the apartment because I did not have three different prior landlords to refer me, I left.

And called another sign. This one I had much more luck with. They showed me three apartments, all in my price range with nice layouts and the amenities I wanted. The property manager was even pleasant and told me all about the neighborhood (and even a bit about its drawbacks).

I was basically ready to sign a lease but I had to go meet a college friend for lunch (even though it was already early afternoon). We had a great meal at this charming small Italian restaurant and she walked me over to her property manager’s office where they took me to see a couple more apartments. Even though these apartments were technically bigger the finishes were very 70s basement. Way too much wood paneling for one person.

After all of this I went back to realtor #4 and rented the apartment I had intended to. I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with friends and suffering the long drive back to campus. I have moving funds from my new office so now I need to hire movers (it is, alas, a third floor walk up). In just a few weeks In Medias Res will be hitting the road again, and next time he’s not coming back!

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 11:10 AM