Apartment Madness!
I sent this email to my family, but I want it here for posterity...
So!
After my housemate and I decided that we were just going to switch rooms to mitigate my "no adult-sized bed" issues, we got an email from our landlady asking if we were going to renew our lease. We countered by asking if she was going to raise the rent. Which she did, spectacularly, to the tune of an extra ¥1600. So we spent the next week negotiating with her, but it looks like she's not going to budge.
Over the weekend we did some chickens-with-our-heads-cut-off scrambling and planning and generally making a fuss, but now we've worked out what we're going to do: spend the time before I leave finding a "good enough" interim place that's cheap as it can be so that we can break the contract without significant financial loss.
This means looking at places pretty intensively over the next two weeks, and then at the very least packing up everything before I leave for vacation. My housemate is fine with moving my things if need be (on Sunday I did a HUGE purge of my bedroom so I don't have quite as much CRAP and it's all organized), but by the time I get home with ohmyghost we'll definitely be in a new place.
The reason for finding a temporary place is two-fold, really. One, if we find a crappy place, we'll want to make the effort to leave and find a better place. Two, we both know that if we renew our lease here, even if we promise ourselves we'll only stay for a couple of months at the higher rent, we'll become complacent and stay on in a place that's only okay for an overblown price.
Moving now is really out of principle. While our landlady is likely to get the ¥6500 she wanted us to pay, and probably the ¥7000-8000 the agent told her she could, we just can't cop to paying that.
Our long-term plan is to find a really nice three-bedroom place for ¥7000-9000/month, and then rent out the other room on Airbnb. We know a lot of people here who are doing it, and as long as we have a great place, we're amazing people to stay with as a visitor so we'll get lots of people no problem. And even if we don't, it might be more than we'd like to pay but it's not actually outside of our pay grades.
But unfortunately, since our contract is up at the end of February, finding a temporary place is imperative. Our needs are few: sit-down toilet, room for a couch (we are taking our couch), and not much more than ¥5000/month. We'll be looking with individual renters rather than agents to escape fees. But in the end, worst comes to worst, we go to an agent and ask for the cheapest, closest place that's not totally rat-infested.
We haven't looked at anything yet, so I'm still really anxious in a bad way, but I know we'll make it happen. It has to.
It does, however, add stress to an already-stressful two/three weeks, in which I'll be trying to get two issues' worth of work done. I'm also doing a lot of New Year catch up with work contacts who I really haven't paid attention to, which makes me super busy. Overall, I'll feel much better when we've seen some apartments and have a few options, but holy hell right now I am reigning in the anxiety.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.
So!
After my housemate and I decided that we were just going to switch rooms to mitigate my "no adult-sized bed" issues, we got an email from our landlady asking if we were going to renew our lease. We countered by asking if she was going to raise the rent. Which she did, spectacularly, to the tune of an extra ¥1600. So we spent the next week negotiating with her, but it looks like she's not going to budge.
Over the weekend we did some chickens-with-our-heads-cut-off scrambling and planning and generally making a fuss, but now we've worked out what we're going to do: spend the time before I leave finding a "good enough" interim place that's cheap as it can be so that we can break the contract without significant financial loss.
This means looking at places pretty intensively over the next two weeks, and then at the very least packing up everything before I leave for vacation. My housemate is fine with moving my things if need be (on Sunday I did a HUGE purge of my bedroom so I don't have quite as much CRAP and it's all organized), but by the time I get home with ohmyghost we'll definitely be in a new place.
The reason for finding a temporary place is two-fold, really. One, if we find a crappy place, we'll want to make the effort to leave and find a better place. Two, we both know that if we renew our lease here, even if we promise ourselves we'll only stay for a couple of months at the higher rent, we'll become complacent and stay on in a place that's only okay for an overblown price.
Moving now is really out of principle. While our landlady is likely to get the ¥6500 she wanted us to pay, and probably the ¥7000-8000 the agent told her she could, we just can't cop to paying that.
Our long-term plan is to find a really nice three-bedroom place for ¥7000-9000/month, and then rent out the other room on Airbnb. We know a lot of people here who are doing it, and as long as we have a great place, we're amazing people to stay with as a visitor so we'll get lots of people no problem. And even if we don't, it might be more than we'd like to pay but it's not actually outside of our pay grades.
But unfortunately, since our contract is up at the end of February, finding a temporary place is imperative. Our needs are few: sit-down toilet, room for a couch (we are taking our couch), and not much more than ¥5000/month. We'll be looking with individual renters rather than agents to escape fees. But in the end, worst comes to worst, we go to an agent and ask for the cheapest, closest place that's not totally rat-infested.
We haven't looked at anything yet, so I'm still really anxious in a bad way, but I know we'll make it happen. It has to.
It does, however, add stress to an already-stressful two/three weeks, in which I'll be trying to get two issues' worth of work done. I'm also doing a lot of New Year catch up with work contacts who I really haven't paid attention to, which makes me super busy. Overall, I'll feel much better when we've seen some apartments and have a few options, but holy hell right now I am reigning in the anxiety.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth.