whoa. I hardly know how else to describe the insanity that was our weekend. Jonathan and I are finally back from home-hunting in DC and are anxious and exhausted. First off: the 11 hour drive. Actually the way there was pretty ok-we were so pumped to finally know where we’re going to be living in DC for at least this next year that the time went by pretty quick. Trivial pursuit question books, the girl who kicked the hornets nest audio book, and some sight seeing made the trip a great adventure. We made it in about 12 hours (with that long of a drive you pretty much always tack on an extra hour with stops from car exhaustion) and crashed at my “uncles” place in Alexandria,VA.
Saturday morning: the insanity began. A little background: i’ve been craigslisting my eyeballs dry almost every day this month trying to get prepared for the house hunt and even more (if that’s possible) the whole week prior. I’ve got things bookmarked, emailed, printed out, organized, filed, you name it! The first place we got to see is an 11am appointment in the Eastern Market/Capitol Hill area. We commute in from my “uncle’s” place and about thirty minutes later we arrive at the Eastern Market metro stop. WE LOVE this area. Think where Meg Ryan lives in You’ve Got Mail in NYC. Not QUITE that expensive/nice but with a very similar vibe. We walk to where the showing is supposed to be and notice that we seem to be following young couples at every turn. We get there and wait by the door while more and more people show up. Finally the agency guy shows and Jonathan and I and about six other couples all cram into this tiny but adorable basement apartment. The agent proceeds to tell all of us that we have to pay $40 per person to submit an application (that’s $80 for a couple) and the first people to get it faxed in has first dibs and so on. (FYI if you don’t get the apartment, that’s 80 smacks down the drain just for playing…woof). People are grabbing paper-work left and right, trying to get around to see all the ins and outs of the apartment. We finally stop standing around in shock of how intense this is for the first apartment we’ve looked at and decide that we truly do love the place. Basically it’s a gem because it’s close to a metro station, in an awesome area, small but very nice and cute, and the cheapest we found all weekend because of rent control! We grab an application and run to the nearest kinkos where (of course) we see one of the other couples faxing their app in. :( The competition for good living in the city NUTS. Pretty much, we were thrown into the city housing search head first with no swimmies and were screamed at to start kicking to keep our head above water. Long story short we did submit the application but won’t find out until tuesday if the other couple didn’t pass the credit check or found something better and don’t want the apartment (if we were in fact the first two couples to actually get our apps in).
So after this intense FIRST stop on saturday we trekked on to another part of the city to look at a bunch more and quickly realized that this area just wasn’t very safe. While most of the places there were privately rented (much easier and less application fees and people etc) they were just too close to a sketch part of town. Not very safe for Jude walks. We then get back on craigslist to see what else has been posted that day and head back to capitol hill to look at a few more. We do a ridiculous amount of walking and finally find one that seems promising (like the first) ->not as cute, more expensive, bigger, further from the metro, but still in the part of town we’ve fallen in love with—>and realize that the land lord would be willing to rent it to us on the spot. We tell him we’d like to wait till tuesday and he agrees (so we can find out about number 1). Lastly we go to one more right around the block and like it even more! It’s another basement apartment with a private entrance, a little bigger than the very first place and with beautiful details like exposed brick and an ornate glass window between the bedroom and the living room high on the wall etc and we really like this one too. Of course, he also can’t tell us anything until Tuesday.
So here we were thinking we were going to come up to DC and find a place and finally know where we’re going to be, and now we were exhausted, through all our listings, and had three places that we could/might/possibly get—->but won’t know till soonest-tuesday… ugh. We didn’t give up on Sunday and tried hard to continue the search but quickly found out that there just isn’t a lot out there in safe areas for our price range. By the end of the second day we were beat but felt we’d done the absolute best we could do having to come up for a weekend living states away. So we said a few prayers, packed up our car and made the 11 hour drive home today none the wiser on our future (well, maybe a little wiser) :). While it was definitely a most stressful and exhausting weekend, we are very excited to hopefully know which of the three will be our home by tomorrow evening. (Pray for #1)! cheap and closest to the metro would be AMAZING but it’s also the biggest wild card of whether or not we’ll get it. LOVE number three also but it’s a little more expensive and farther from metro. Worst case scenario? All of them fall through and we’re back at square one with no time to get back to DC till after Paris….aka end of June when we wanted to be officially moving. Would really like that NOT to happen. I feel like this post was kind of delirious—for that I apologize, time for sleep.
