Update, Part Two: Movin' on in.
goalie_gurl and I had gotten along very well as roommates since she had moved in during the summer of 2003. She and I knew each other from high school, when I dated one of her older sisters, Melissa. (a lovely, tragic story of teenage romance, but not very unique so I'll save it for sometime when I'm feeling nostalgic) Around the time mightybaldking was about to get married and move out of our place, I was having dinner one night with Melissa and a bunch of my other old high school friends. I lamented on how annoying it was to have to find a new roommate after I had become so accustomed to my current two. Melissa brightened up and mentioned that because she and her husband were expecting a baby soon, they were trying to find a way get goalie_gurl out of their house that didn't involve violence or bribery. I told Melissa to send her by our place and see what she thinks of it… and the rest is history. (or at least too dull to be worth retelling)
After our landlord Mike went paranoid on me, she and I decided to go and search for a two-bedroom place since I couldn't quite afford to live on my own, and she didn't want to have to move out of the city and live with another one of her sisters because she works downtown. Our search for a place hinged on two requirements. Mine was that it had to be within walking distance of the subway, because I was tired of having to take a bus or streetcar to get to the nearest station, as they can be so unreliable in Toronto compared to the subway. Hers was that she didn't want to go have to outside the apartment in order to do her laundry, as our previous place had a washer & dryer in the basement, but you had to go outside and around to the back of the building to get to it… and it was even less fun considering we lived in a third floor walk-up.
This city is a much better place to be a renter now compared to when I first moved here just before the millennium. I still remember the experience of having to look for an apartment with the vacancy rate at 0.9%, where you'd go for a viewing a half-hour in advance of the listing in the newspaper, and not only was there a line-up to see the place, but it was so long that by the time you got to see it someone would have already offered the landlord first & last… in cash. Thanks to the downtown condo boom however, with all the new yuppies trying to make an extra buck through an investment property, there are a lot more options in the newspaper and with a vacancy rate at around 4% you don't have to just grab at whatever comes along. It's nice to be a chooser.
We viewed probably a dozen places, most of them in the east as we both grew up in Ajax so it wouldn't hurt to be somewhat closer to our families, but also a few in the west because my day job is at the edge of Etobicoke and Mississauga. As much as we liked the idea of living in downtown proper, like the Annex, $1400/month+ for a two-bedroom was simply not worth it. (my brother pays $700/month for his basement bachelor in the Annex. Yeah, no thanks.) We had a couple of applications fall through, which were annoying at the time, but they turned out to be blessings in disguise. Just after Halloween, I booked the viewing for the place we're in now. We were already sceptical after the weeks of searching, and the ad was rather low-key which made it seem like it wasn't trying to sell the apartment very hard. (the market here is such that the large rental corporations are offering free televisions, free parking spaces, even a month of free rent in order to attract people) Once we saw the apartment though the feeling of "too good to be true" hit me, and goalie_gurl had to almost literally shake me out of it in order to take the place quickly.
So since November, we have been living in a two-bedroom basement apartment, next door to Keele subway station, a short walk to the northeast (top-right) corner of High Park. I am in a near nirvana state with the subway. When I leave my front door, in less than three minutes I'm standing on the platform. We're further west then before, so my previous one-hour commute to work now takes 40 minutes or less, and since I'm going against the rush hour it's never crowded. Even better, Keele station happens to be an elevated part of the Bloor Line, so the trains passing by that would normally shake everything in a basement apartment simply make a dull rumble that you only notice when it's quiet. The 7-Eleven is only a stone's throw away, and our section of Bloor Street has plenty of food options. There's laundry in the basement, but this time it's right outside our door, so the roommate is happy. The living room is a decent size. While the bedrooms are a little small, we have a dining room which I've been able to turn into an office, so my bedroom is actually kind of roomy. Plus, there's High Park. While I love urban living, having such a large green space so close by is really comforting. To top it all off, our rent is $850/month… inclusive. I had to confirm three times with the landlords that it was actually the amount they were asking for before I really believed it. Oh yeah, I'm stayin'.
Our new landlords, Mats & Eva, are a Croatian couple who are old, but not yet elderly. They've been living here for a few decades, but they still have very thick Slavic accents. Mats has the gift of gab, as my mother would say, but often times you can't quite make out what he's saying, so you have to simply nod your head and smile while your brain tries to catch up. They were looking for stability when it came to renting the apartment, and it turns out that they declined a few people before we came along, including a group of four students who were offering to pay a lot more rent. Our selling feature turned out not to be our jobs or credit ratings, but our personal lives. She emphasized her role in the Mendelssohn Choir and singing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, (even though she grumbles about "fuckingchoir" weekly) while I played up my teaching disabled kids how to ski. They were confused at first when we explained to them that we were not a couple, but when I phrased it in the form of "she's like a little sister to me", that seemed to get the vibe of acceptance from them. We have two couples as neighbours living on the 1st and 2nd floor. While I at first felt like we were getting away with something because our rent was so cheap, when I found out that one of the couples had been living here for seven years without the rent going up once, it made more sense as to why it was this cheap. I figure Mats & Eva had paid off the mortgage on this place long ago, and since they were living with one of their grown children out in Brampton, it's likely that they don't need all that much extra income. I can see why they'd choose their tenants then based on "we're not going to bother you" factors.
I feel that this is really going to be a place I'll stay in for a few years… at least until I can save up enough for a genuine mortgage down-payment. Of course, I'm going to have to learn how to save first. Baby steps.
After our landlord Mike went paranoid on me, she and I decided to go and search for a two-bedroom place since I couldn't quite afford to live on my own, and she didn't want to have to move out of the city and live with another one of her sisters because she works downtown. Our search for a place hinged on two requirements. Mine was that it had to be within walking distance of the subway, because I was tired of having to take a bus or streetcar to get to the nearest station, as they can be so unreliable in Toronto compared to the subway. Hers was that she didn't want to go have to outside the apartment in order to do her laundry, as our previous place had a washer & dryer in the basement, but you had to go outside and around to the back of the building to get to it… and it was even less fun considering we lived in a third floor walk-up.
This city is a much better place to be a renter now compared to when I first moved here just before the millennium. I still remember the experience of having to look for an apartment with the vacancy rate at 0.9%, where you'd go for a viewing a half-hour in advance of the listing in the newspaper, and not only was there a line-up to see the place, but it was so long that by the time you got to see it someone would have already offered the landlord first & last… in cash. Thanks to the downtown condo boom however, with all the new yuppies trying to make an extra buck through an investment property, there are a lot more options in the newspaper and with a vacancy rate at around 4% you don't have to just grab at whatever comes along. It's nice to be a chooser.
We viewed probably a dozen places, most of them in the east as we both grew up in Ajax so it wouldn't hurt to be somewhat closer to our families, but also a few in the west because my day job is at the edge of Etobicoke and Mississauga. As much as we liked the idea of living in downtown proper, like the Annex, $1400/month+ for a two-bedroom was simply not worth it. (my brother pays $700/month for his basement bachelor in the Annex. Yeah, no thanks.) We had a couple of applications fall through, which were annoying at the time, but they turned out to be blessings in disguise. Just after Halloween, I booked the viewing for the place we're in now. We were already sceptical after the weeks of searching, and the ad was rather low-key which made it seem like it wasn't trying to sell the apartment very hard. (the market here is such that the large rental corporations are offering free televisions, free parking spaces, even a month of free rent in order to attract people) Once we saw the apartment though the feeling of "too good to be true" hit me, and goalie_gurl had to almost literally shake me out of it in order to take the place quickly.
So since November, we have been living in a two-bedroom basement apartment, next door to Keele subway station, a short walk to the northeast (top-right) corner of High Park. I am in a near nirvana state with the subway. When I leave my front door, in less than three minutes I'm standing on the platform. We're further west then before, so my previous one-hour commute to work now takes 40 minutes or less, and since I'm going against the rush hour it's never crowded. Even better, Keele station happens to be an elevated part of the Bloor Line, so the trains passing by that would normally shake everything in a basement apartment simply make a dull rumble that you only notice when it's quiet. The 7-Eleven is only a stone's throw away, and our section of Bloor Street has plenty of food options. There's laundry in the basement, but this time it's right outside our door, so the roommate is happy. The living room is a decent size. While the bedrooms are a little small, we have a dining room which I've been able to turn into an office, so my bedroom is actually kind of roomy. Plus, there's High Park. While I love urban living, having such a large green space so close by is really comforting. To top it all off, our rent is $850/month… inclusive. I had to confirm three times with the landlords that it was actually the amount they were asking for before I really believed it. Oh yeah, I'm stayin'.
Our new landlords, Mats & Eva, are a Croatian couple who are old, but not yet elderly. They've been living here for a few decades, but they still have very thick Slavic accents. Mats has the gift of gab, as my mother would say, but often times you can't quite make out what he's saying, so you have to simply nod your head and smile while your brain tries to catch up. They were looking for stability when it came to renting the apartment, and it turns out that they declined a few people before we came along, including a group of four students who were offering to pay a lot more rent. Our selling feature turned out not to be our jobs or credit ratings, but our personal lives. She emphasized her role in the Mendelssohn Choir and singing with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, (even though she grumbles about "fuckingchoir" weekly) while I played up my teaching disabled kids how to ski. They were confused at first when we explained to them that we were not a couple, but when I phrased it in the form of "she's like a little sister to me", that seemed to get the vibe of acceptance from them. We have two couples as neighbours living on the 1st and 2nd floor. While I at first felt like we were getting away with something because our rent was so cheap, when I found out that one of the couples had been living here for seven years without the rent going up once, it made more sense as to why it was this cheap. I figure Mats & Eva had paid off the mortgage on this place long ago, and since they were living with one of their grown children out in Brampton, it's likely that they don't need all that much extra income. I can see why they'd choose their tenants then based on "we're not going to bother you" factors.
I feel that this is really going to be a place I'll stay in for a few years… at least until I can save up enough for a genuine mortgage down-payment. Of course, I'm going to have to learn how to save first. Baby steps.