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I have been wanting to post about my apartment hunt for about a month now, for there have been so many experiences that surprised me. Now that everything is done I can put my legs up and talk about it.

It all started end of September. Two months before my lease expires on November 27, I started my hunt for a new apartment. After a year of staying in an apartment where the heating bills often ran to a number north of three crisp Ben Franklins, I needed to be by myself in a place where I controlled my own destiny and my heater.

Now some of you freaks out there will adopt to go all snooty on me and tell me that while on a hunt for a roof over your head’s on, no early start is early enough. But here something. I made up a list of 20 apartment complexes in the area and the managers in almost every single one of them asked me to come back after November 1. Just one complex knew then that an apartment would be available on Dec 1. The common refrain was that though a 30 day (or more) advance notice is always standard requirement, no one really followed it. That was news to me.

Normally I would have gone ahead and got the one apartment that was available. Being a stone’s throw (more like 50 meters) away from a Subji Mandi and a Taco Bell, the location appealed to the D.W.B (”Desi Walmart Boy” according to certain smug people) in me. The apartment itself was the “middle” unit in a three unit block, on the ground floor, which meant it would be carpet-ed and also would not be exposed to the elements to the extent my current apartment (which is a corner apartment) is. But like some obvious choices, there was a catch.

Now, being a virtual recluse in the area (I usually roll only with mah homies from Jersey City, 20 miles away to the east), the only people that I know in the area are a couple of out of town project managers who spent their “in-town” weeks in local hotels. So I relied mainly on online resources for my research. Now this obvious choice of an apartment was listed in one of these online resources and every single review there was negative. In fact, they were so negative that a simple search on Google revealed that the apartment complex was suing the website to have these reviews removed from public domain.

But there was no other apartment available. I had exhausted all other resources. For all those of you who are going to say “What about Sulekha?”, I have only this answer - “Sulekha sucks!” Well, not because I did not get responses to my ad, for I got some. But when the market is stagnant, you are not going to get that many responses anyways. But what pissed me more were the morons who cannot figure out what the ad is about. Even though the ad was posted under “Apartments Wanted” and my text making it obvious about the fact that I NEED an apartment to stay in, I got responses from people wanting to know what was the rent of the apartment and when it would be available. And the spam! Dont even get me started. It appears that a lot of Europeans have children outside wedlock and come to America looking for jobs. And they make the same mistake of thinking that I made a mistake with puncuation and put in the title without a question mark in the end. So, with no end in sight, I decided to post a version of the ad on this blog.

Actually I had gone through the same grind last year. Then I had decided to demonstrate the miniscule laugh quotient that I possess. But it appears that I underestimated myself and was too funny (refer to the director’s cut version of that post here). Because no one even noticed that I was looking an apartment and my purpose was not served at all and I had to edit the post and make it concise. But desperation makes you do things that you swore to avoid. So I posted the same bland Sulekha ad here.

Now, I have an apartment. While I did not find out about a apartment complex that I missed out during my research (it appears that I have been very thorough), all my misgivings about one have been dispelled. Thanks to Missus Em (and not to forget the Resident Mathematician) and Tivi, all my doubts have been clarified and I have signed a lease in that same apartment complex .

Missus Em, after reading my post and seeing the mention of Parsippany put me in touch with Tivi, who I found is a occasional visitor here. Through Tivi, I got in touch with a couple of people who had/now lived in the same complex that I had my doubts about. Talking to them, I realized that my destiny is my hands only. So now I am moving in on December 1.

So Missus Em and Tivi, I owe you guys one! And the rest of you who pulled my leg, a big “Ha!” to you. As the Soup Nazi would say about his Mulligatawny, no rasam for you!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Blogs, Personal.