Movin' on up!

Last night, we went to look at the prospective apartment.  The landlord was there, as well as the current tenant.  The tenant showed us around (his wife was out)--he was very nice.

The set up is different from where we are, so its hard for me to picture what the place will look like with all of our stuff.  But basically, you walk in the front door into the living room (there is a coat closet).  Through the living room is the eat-in kitchen.  Much more storage, cupboard and counter space than me have here.  Off of the kitchen to the left is the full bathroom.  To the right is---sigh, here is where my bad memory comes in...Was the stairwell there, or was it the basement?  Anyway, if you go straight through the kitchen, there is like a breezeway/mudroom.  And a deck off of that!

Upstairs is 3 bedrooms and a 1/2 bath.  All 3 of the bedrooms have closets--imagine!  They're not huge (the rooms or the closets), but we can make them work.  The basement has at least double the storage space that this has, especially once the tenant takes his turtle pool out (big pool, 4 turtles....*me, scratching my head as to why someone would want that in their basement*).

So, we took a rental application  home.  The landlady was very nice, and said that she thought we would be a great fit there.  But she also said that she was going to be showing the apartment to someone else later last night.  I hate that.  Feeling like I have to make someone like me.  But the kids behaved, and it seemed to go well.

We wanted to get the application in as soon as possible, and she said she wanted to visit us in our current home (has ANYONE ever had a prospective landlord do that???), so she would pick it up today (Steve has Tuesday mornings off).  She came over around 10am (before which we cleaned frantically), and wanted to talk to all of us (Did I mention that she is a retired child psychologist?  She is very interested in us, in the kids and the fact that we homeschool.).

She very solemnly told the children that last night, she and her husband (who we have yet to meet) had decided that they wanted to let us live there.  And did my children know why?  Eli offered the fact that they were "good", and she said that it wasn't a case of "bad" or "good", but that they were polite, and seemed like they would treat the house like a HOME (she kept using that word) and take care of it.  The kids were pleased, and we dismissed them so that the grown-ups could talk.

Basically, we found out that she does the screening of the new tenants, her husband does a lot of the maintenance (although we'll be responsible for mowing the lawn), and her DAUGHTER deals with all of the money stuff!  I'm waiting for the daughter to contact me--they require the rent to be paid via automatic withdrawals (I'm not sure how happy I am about this--I understand it from their point of view, but I'll be honest, there were more than a couple of months where we needed a couple of days grace when the rent was due), and our rent will be due mid-month, not on the first.

Anyway, I forgot to have Steve sign the rental agreement, so the landlady called me.  I mentioned something about giving our current landlady notice, and she made (what I thought was) a kind of funny comment about waiting until we had talked to her daughter to give notice.  ????  If they want us to move in 7/15, we have to notify our landlady by 6/15, to give her 30 days notice.  So now I can't help but think that maybe the daughter has the power of veto?  Our financial picture isn't exactly rosy, although we pay all of our bills on time, and I wonder if that has them worried?  She did say that Steve can sign the form when we meet with the daughter--I think the earliest we could schedule that would be Friday night--THE 15th.  Sigh.

The woman also stressed that we are to think of her and her husband as friends, not landlords.  We can have that kind of relationship with her daughter, since she handles the money.  She also made comments about coming over to garden with the kids, and wanted to know if we utilized the public schools for phys. ed.  We stressed that we have a large circle of friends, family and fellow homeschoolers to socialize with.  I hope she isn't intrusive, y'know? She mentioned something about us letting her know if she's around too much?  Is she planning on hanging out with us a lot?  I'm not sure what to expect.

I sound like I'm not excited to move.  I guess I'll feel a lot better once a rental agreement is signed.  And I'm starting to remember how much work moving is. And I'm nervous about getting our security deposit back--I don't know if our landlady will give us a hard time.  She wouldn't have a reason to.  The apartment is in the same shape it was when we moved in.  Not to mention, I'll be in Chicago from 7/11-7/14...moving on the 15th will be crazy!  We will be able to start moving boxes and such as soon as the current tenants are out, so that we don't have to move everything in one day.  That's a relief.

So that's the story so far.  Hopefully the next time we see the apartment, I'll feel comfortable taking some pictures.  It isn't a mansion, but I think it will suit us well.