Okay, so I’m a little angry with myself.
Or not. I can’t make up my mind.
I’m moving to a very small town in BFE* for my first full-time teaching position. Housing has turned out to be much more problematic than I thought. There is one (count 'em, one) apartment complex, and it’s scary with the cinderblocks, rusting cars, and other unscenic accountrements. There are a bunch of houses, but most of them are just out of my price range. There is a dearth of available roommates, so no practical way to split rent and utilities.
I had found one house that seemed perfect - three bedroom, two bath, garage, screened in front porch, nice big back porch, some bushes and trees - and it was within my price range. The deal was complicated by the fact that my prospective landlord was in the process of buying the house. Murphy’s Law kicked in multiple times during the buy, and instead of being able to move in just after the 10th, I was getting told that it might not be until Labor Day Weekend.
I talked with the prospective landlord multiple times on the phone. He was friendly and more than willing to negotiate on some points, but . . . I dunno, there was something I couldn’t put my finger on, a kind of “oh, I’m a super business man” hussle to him.
Anyways, I met him in person about a week and a half ago. Again, he seemed very nice, friendly . . . and there was still that feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on, something that made me uncomfortable. He spent several minutes telling me that he could read people so well that, when he ran his own plant nursery, he never got a bad check. And so on and so on. Now, one thing I could definitely see as a downside: he and his wife were purchasing the house to retire to in three years or so, and needed rental income in the meantime. They had a big emotional investment in this house - which meant that they were just a little paranoid about how I would treat it.
And then, he asked if it would be okay if they stayed at the house while they were in town. Just a couple of weekends a year, and they would give me tons of warning. I kind of hemmed and hawed, and a couple of days later, I heard of another possibility - a two bedroom condo, bills paid - and when he called to follow up on things, I basically told him that I was going to take the condo, and he should find another renter.
Well, the upshot of it is, there were people lined up to rent his house, and the condo deal fell through. While normally I would never have let the house go without having confirmation on the condo, that oogy gut feeling convinced me to go ahead and do so. I may have screwed myself on housing, but I haven’t gained anything tangible.
Stupid or smart? I can’t decide. I suspect that I wouldn’t have had a day’s privacy in the house - what with him and his wife calling to check on the trees they like so much and worry that he might just show up with a suitcase saying “oh, my wife couldn’t make it this weekend”. All in all, this’d be a lot simpler if he’d had “dangerous: do not rent from” tattooed on his forehead.
*[sub]BFE = Butt Fucking Egypt[/sub]
