Wanted to share my somewhat big news with all of you. John and I are moving. No, not to Portland or Seattle, unfortunately. We're staying here in the Chicago area, at least for the next year.
Here's the situation - my current landlord is a complete asshole. He refuses to fix anything in the house, which is falling down around our ears. We still have holes in our kitchen floor from the refrigerator disaster. He won't answer our repeated phone calls to him. That last part actually worked in our favor and why we're able to move. See, our lease was up on May 1st. We'd been calling him and asking about a new lease for six months and he wouldn't acknowledge us. So we suddenly had a window of opportunity to get the hell out of there since we were no longer tied to this house.
John is a real estate guru. He used to sell houses for a long time, so he knows the ins and outs of the entire MLS system and knows how to access information that's not available to the public. He started researching and found 4 places - two houses and two townhouses. He tried to set up appointments but none of the agents were calling him back. Then I had to leave to go to Toronto. While I was gone three of the places were taken off the market.
Needless to say, I was pissed. But then John said that maybe we were being funneled toward this remaining townhouse for a reason. And he was right. We went and saw it last Wednesday. Turns out the agent that showed us is actually the owner and would be our landlord. She was quite the feisty Polish gal! LOL! We hit it off right away. It helps that my husband is the King of Schmooze and can charm the pants off anyone. :-) She told us that she had a lot of applications turned in already for the place and that she would make her decision on Friday. Our hopes kind of sank then. We didn't know we were in competition. (Two people actually called her while we were with her, wanting to know if she'd made a decision).
We really liked the place. We lose our downstairs family room, but we gain a sitting room/reading room with lots of sunlight, and also a half bath and a walk-in closet. All of the rooms are bigger than what we have now, which is great. There's also NO basement which means no more sump pumps and flooding! Yay! John won't have to mow the lawn or shovel the snow since the association takes care of that. It's on a quiet cul-de-sac, which is great. It also has a lake behind it! And it's only another 2 miles further for me to drive to work.
But the most important thing - it's lower rent than we're paying now. This is why we wanted to move. Because my job situation is so unstable right now, we need to protect ourselves as much as we can in case I'm out of work for an extended period of time.
So anyway, long story short - we talked with Frieda for ages and then she gave us the lease application. We thought maybe we had a chance of her picking us. That was pretty much confirmed two hours later when she called us to make sure we were going to fill out the application and email it to her that night! Why would she do that if she didn't us? Sure enough, she called on Thursday and told us the townhouse was ours. :-)
We signed the paperwork on Friday and we move in July 1st!
As a hysterical footnote, John called our landlord to tell him we were leaving and of course he wouldn't answer the phone. But it's on his voicemail as us giving notice. And we'll send him a letter. Won't he be surprised when he doesn't get a rent payment in July.
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charityflint's house right after work today and we're on the road to Lansing, Michigan in the morning for MediaWest. We haven't been to this con in about 5 years, so we're looking forward to it, and seeing old friends. I even came up with door decorations at the last minute the other day, so I'll have to take a pic of it for you guys.