Insane day (and a plea for advice)
You know you're having a bizarre day when a visit to the ER is not the most interesting or stressful thing in it.
Kael woke us up at 4:30 this morning with a horrible sort of honking, froggy cry, and was wheezing badly on each intake of breath. To make a long story short, the on-call nurse at our pediatrician's took one listen to him over the phone, recognized it as Croup (a viral infection causing swelling in the already-narrow voice box) and sent us to the ER. We were the only people there, so we were seen immediately, got the Croup diagnosis confirmed, and got him some steroids for the swelling. All of which would have been terrifying if we were any kind of reasonable parents, but everyone from our baby book to the nurses to the doctor treated this as a fairly ordinary thing, dangerous only if left untreated, so we actually took it more or less in stride. Even Kael seemed calm; he was alert and reasonably playful throughout, not acting sick or even uncomfortable. Since then, he's been fussier, but he's breathing fine.
To explain what made this day even more crazy, I should back up to last night, when we got a notice from our complex that in light of market conditions, they were generously offering to let us renew our lease (which expires in July) at the same rate as we're currently paying, i.e. without the annual increase to which we've become accustomed. Thing is, 2gouda4u had just checked online, and they're currently offering another apartment, completely identical to ours, for $511 less than ours. $511 per month. For a year-long lease.
So, since we were stuck at home anyway, we went in to talk to the management about this. I was basically figuring we could talk them down to maybe $50 or $100 over the other apartment. We got a fairly low-level person, but after she spoke to her manager, she told us that the absolute best she could offer was $100 off our current rent, but that we were welcome to lease the other apartment at the offered rate, and there's a special offer of $1000 off the first month's rent.
As far as we can tell, this is completely insane. If we move, they lose the $511 per month, the $1000 special, and they have to recondition our apartment for sale. They get some up-front fees from the new rental, and a couple month's rent from our early termination of the current lease, but by the same token they lose a couple months next year (since our lease would expire in May rather than July). On the other hand, if we stay here with a reasonably reduced rent, they only lose maybe $450 a month. I just don't see how the math adds up on their end. The only justification she could offer was that the other apartment was so low because it had been on the market for a while and not sold, but again, the apartments are identical- same complex, same floor, same floorplan, same finish quality (we've inspected it personally to confirm this, and in fact the appliances are a little nicer), so it's hard to see how they could expect it to be any easier to sell our current one.
I have an absolute horror of moving (especially with a 7-month-old, and another move planned in a year), but moving to the other apartment saves us about $7000 over the next year, and it just doesn't make sense to leave that kind of money on the table. So we've put down a $300 deposit to hold the other apartment until Monday. On Monday we'll meet with the manager of the person we've spoken to so far, and make one last try to talk some sense into them, but it sounds like she may be constrained by people yet further up the chain. Failing that, I guess we're moving in the next couple weeks.
So, the request for advice: can anyone explain what's going on here? Are we missing something? Are we crazy to be moving on this short a notice, for this kind of reason?
Kael woke us up at 4:30 this morning with a horrible sort of honking, froggy cry, and was wheezing badly on each intake of breath. To make a long story short, the on-call nurse at our pediatrician's took one listen to him over the phone, recognized it as Croup (a viral infection causing swelling in the already-narrow voice box) and sent us to the ER. We were the only people there, so we were seen immediately, got the Croup diagnosis confirmed, and got him some steroids for the swelling. All of which would have been terrifying if we were any kind of reasonable parents, but everyone from our baby book to the nurses to the doctor treated this as a fairly ordinary thing, dangerous only if left untreated, so we actually took it more or less in stride. Even Kael seemed calm; he was alert and reasonably playful throughout, not acting sick or even uncomfortable. Since then, he's been fussier, but he's breathing fine.
To explain what made this day even more crazy, I should back up to last night, when we got a notice from our complex that in light of market conditions, they were generously offering to let us renew our lease (which expires in July) at the same rate as we're currently paying, i.e. without the annual increase to which we've become accustomed. Thing is, 2gouda4u had just checked online, and they're currently offering another apartment, completely identical to ours, for $511 less than ours. $511 per month. For a year-long lease.
So, since we were stuck at home anyway, we went in to talk to the management about this. I was basically figuring we could talk them down to maybe $50 or $100 over the other apartment. We got a fairly low-level person, but after she spoke to her manager, she told us that the absolute best she could offer was $100 off our current rent, but that we were welcome to lease the other apartment at the offered rate, and there's a special offer of $1000 off the first month's rent.
As far as we can tell, this is completely insane. If we move, they lose the $511 per month, the $1000 special, and they have to recondition our apartment for sale. They get some up-front fees from the new rental, and a couple month's rent from our early termination of the current lease, but by the same token they lose a couple months next year (since our lease would expire in May rather than July). On the other hand, if we stay here with a reasonably reduced rent, they only lose maybe $450 a month. I just don't see how the math adds up on their end. The only justification she could offer was that the other apartment was so low because it had been on the market for a while and not sold, but again, the apartments are identical- same complex, same floor, same floorplan, same finish quality (we've inspected it personally to confirm this, and in fact the appliances are a little nicer), so it's hard to see how they could expect it to be any easier to sell our current one.
I have an absolute horror of moving (especially with a 7-month-old, and another move planned in a year), but moving to the other apartment saves us about $7000 over the next year, and it just doesn't make sense to leave that kind of money on the table. So we've put down a $300 deposit to hold the other apartment until Monday. On Monday we'll meet with the manager of the person we've spoken to so far, and make one last try to talk some sense into them, but it sounds like she may be constrained by people yet further up the chain. Failing that, I guess we're moving in the next couple weeks.
So, the request for advice: can anyone explain what's going on here? Are we missing something? Are we crazy to be moving on this short a notice, for this kind of reason?