May 12 2007
Apartment Hunting is Hard to Do
I’ve never been big on the whole apartment hunting thing. The last apartment She and I lived in fell into our laps through some friends at church. We’re currently living with a roommate while we save for The Big Move, and he did all the work to find this place. So needless to say, I’ve not much experience when it comes to looking for a place to live. Couple that with the fact that the place we’re looking to live is 275 miles away, and apartment hunting is pretty damned hard to do.
I’ve recently been spending some time checking out what Craig’s List has to offer, and I’ve emailed a few people about apartments. So far I haven’t had much luck. Looking in May when you want to move in August 1st certainly doesn’t help any. The few landlords I have heard back from either have already rented their places or plan to well before August. I’m sure that Craig’s List will be more helpful as the moving day approaches, but so far it’s only been useful for giving us an idea of housing costs.
We’ve already been up to Portland in February and spoke to a realtor in Scarborough about rentals. As expected, he didn’t have anything to show us given the nearly six month lead time. She and I will be going back up for Memorial Day weekend (which also happens to be our second anniversary) to do some more scouting. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find at least one or two apartments that we can actually see then, but I’m not holding my breath. If nothing else, we’ll use the time to enjoy more of Portland’s dining scene and to help narrow down the exact area we want to call home. So far Scarborough is tops on the list, with Portland and South Portland running just behind. Westbrook and some of the towns north of Portland are also options.
On tap for this afternoon, I’ll be adding some more bits and pieces to New2Maine.com and scouring the web for rental sites that list Maine properties. I guess it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but most of the sites I’ve seen so far offer summer rentals with weekly rates in the $800-1000 range to start. That’s what we’re hoping to find for a monthly rental, so the listings I’ve seen haven’t been of much use. I’ll report back tomorrow with my findings.