Option A (the Memorial Day pick) was a 2.5 bedroom third floor apartment at Ocean and Walton. The neighborhood was pretty quiet, Back Cove was within walking distance, and the sunlight in the place was stellar. The thought of having a separate office was quite appealing too. Much of the apartment was newly renovated, but the kitchen left something to be desired. There was simply almost no prep space. As I like to cook (and am told I’m pretty good at it), that was a major minus in my book. Balancing that out was the fact that the landlord is a great guy and we’d have loved to live in a building he owns. This place was going for about $1000 a month, plus utilities–just a bit above our original desired cap of $1000, utilities included.

Option B (the winner) was a 2 bedroom second floor apartment on Forest Ave. This one is only a half-mile from Option A, so it’s still within walking distance of Back Cove. Baxter Woods Park is just down the street too, so our dog will get to enjoy the outdoors quite often. The bedrooms are a little bigger, but there are only two of them, so I’ll have to set up my “office” in the guest room. The kitchen has ample counter and storage space, and the feel of the place is just a bit more modern and cheery. Coin-op laundry in the basement is a minus, but the other apartment had hookups, so we would have had to buy a washer and dryer or used a laundromat. In the end, though, the overall value of the apartment was too much to turn down. Forest Ave. is much busier than Walton St., so this place was listed for $925 a month, heat and hot water included.

It’s tough to make your decision solely on the basis of money, and we did not use that as the only deciding factor, but a chief concern in my mind was not financially crippling ourself by taking on an apartment that really was not within our budget. In the winter, the difference between these two places will work out to probably $300 a month or more. That’s just too much money to ignore. We’re happy with the place we chose, regardless of the cost, but the fact that we’ll continue to be able to put money toward an eventual down payment makes us even happier. We finally (almost) have an address! Now it’s time to get the lease signed and start planning the actual move…

We’re headed up again this weekend to (hopefully) sign a lease on a place. We’re bringing Her sister for an extra opinion. I’m hoping to get at least four showings lined up between now and Friday. There is a nice development in South Portland that could be worth checking out. It’s extremely close to the airport though, so that is certainly a strike against it before we even get there. However, we live in the flight path of the Albany Airport now, so it might not be that big a sacrifice. We’ll have to see. I’m not sure on the heating in that place–if it’s electric again, I think we’ll avoid it.

All in all, things are coming together. The situation with the apartment from the first trip is disappointing, but we’re excited to see so many places with potential listed now. I guess maybe it was too much to hope for to find the right place two-plus months in advance. We’re closing in on a month to go now, and things are looking up. I can’t wait. I counted today–only 23 working days left.

The wedding was in New London, another coastal community. I realized that the ocean smell and the sound of waves are probably very high on the list of motivators for moving to Portland. They bring back memories of vacations at the shore when I was young. If you haven’t experienced sleeping within earshot of waves lapping at the beach, do yourself a favor and rent a place on the coast somewhere, if even just for a weekend.

Okay, back to the moving prep. Our very promising apartment off Ocean Ave is still on the table and looks like it will be our new home starting at the end of next month. I’ve been playing a mean game of phone and email tag with the landlord, but we plan to head up to Portland again in two weeks to get a look at the finished renovations and sign the lease, assuming everything looks good. I can’t wait. Once that’s done, the moving planning can begin in earnest.

Speaking of planning for the move, I counted today, and I only have 28 working days left. Yay! While at the wedding this weekend we did enlist some help to drive my car up to Maine and unload the truck. We’re pretty set on renting a moving truck and doing this ourselves–it’s just too expensive to have someone else do it for us. Too bad my company isn’t covering moving costs. I think that’s about it for now. We’re down to seven weeks, give or take. It’s getting so close…

This newest listing we’ve found on Craig’s List is a very different sort of place. It’s a two level apartment, very much the same feel as our current duplex. We like being able to go upstairs to bed. It feels more like a home that way. There are only two bedrooms, but the master is very large. There is a washer and dryer in the apartment, and a dishwasher too. These are all pros. However, the location is not quite as nice. It’s really probably only a mile and a half between the two apartments, but it’s an apartment complex rather than a house with multiple units. Our dog wouldn’t get to walk in the parks as easily–the difference is 2 blocks to Baxter Woods versus like 15 blocks. The parking situation doesn’t seem quite as good, and with that many neighbors, it’s a bit of a gamble.

We still have a month or so before we really need to sit down to sign a lease, so we have time to think. The Forest Ave complex is a slightly nicer apartment, but the location isn’t as good. The other place also has some character. From the pics on Craig’s List, this complex has a “built quickly to start making money on rent” feel to it. We may be way off base, but that’s the feeling the photos leave. Decisions, decisions…

Anyway, We have continued our apartment search and think we may be on to something. We were discussing our apartment hunt with some family we saw at the wake and were lamenting the difficulty of searching for a place to live two-plus months ahead of time. Her uncle suggested the following strategy, and it seems that we have found a few landlords who are interested.

The suggestion is to offer to pay slightly higher rent for a year in exchange for holding the apartment until we’re ready to move. Most of the places we’re looking at are in the $1,000 a month range (that seems to be the going rate for a 2 bedroom in and around Portland). We can’t really move much before July 20th, my last day at work. We’ve found at least one place we very much like, but the owner wants it rented by June 15th, more than a month ahead of when we’d actually be able to occupy it. With the cost of moving and security deposits already weighing heavily on our bank balance, the thought of forking over another $1,000 up front to hold a place when we can’t even live there yet is something we just can’t stomach, especially when we still need to pay our rent in New York too.

So instead, we’ve offered the following to the landlord, and he seems agreeable: we will sign a lease for July 15 and instead of $1,000 a month, we will pay him $1,050 or $1,075 a month for a year. This allows us to amortize the extra $1,000 for June 15-July 15 over the course of an entire year (and pay a little less than $1,000 to boot), and allows the landlord to not have to spend his time and money advertising and showing the apartment. This seems to be a win-win for everyone involved. The landlord doesn’t need to continue to try to get the apartment rented, and we don’t need to see a dozen more apartments when we head back to Portland at the end of June to finalize our living arrangements.

We’ve made a similar offer to two different landlords and both are intrigued by the idea. Thanks to Her uncle, it looks like we’ll be able to find a place a good bit easier than we thought, and we won’t even have to settle for the best of what’s available the last weekend in June. I’d imagine this strategy will work better for individual landlords than it will for the large corporations in the business of renting out apartments (in fact, I’d be very surprised of any of the latter category would consider this arrangement). If you’re looking to follow Her and I up to Maine and are trying to get a head start on the process, suggest this type of arrangement to the owner if you find a place you really like. You might be pleasantly surprised by his or her reaction.

We did get to see several neighborhoods and a few actual apartments today. So far the most promising is an apartment on Spring St. in Westbrook, about 15 minutes from downtown Portland. The more time we spend in the Portland suburbs, the more we’re not sure we want to actually live in Portland. I think if we can find anything in Westbrook or Scarborough that fits our needs, we’ll probably jump on that. The Portland neighborhoods we looked at included Woodfords, Deering, and Libbytown. All of these are on or near Back Cove and are fairly nice. We have another viewing in Libbytown on Saturday, and got a lead on a place on Back Cove from a waitress in Old Port. If we’re going to live in Portland, I think it will be around that area. We took a look at some places in the East End and also one in West End and were not thrilled with the neighborhoods. I think if we didn’t have a dog, they might be nice. But we do, and so we need a place to walk her.

After our last viewing in Westbrook, we decided to head to Old Port for dinner. We got distracted on the way by all of the traffic heading to the ballpark for a Sea Dogs game. Having not been to a professional baseball game in years, we decided it would be a fun diversion, and Old Port would still be there when the game was over. Hot dogs and fries at the ballpark isn’t exactly dinner at a four star restaurant, but it was a lot of fun. We got seats out on the right field wall (the trouble with showing up 40 minutes before the first pitch at the start of a holiday weekend), but the view was quite good. We, along with the 7300 other fans in attendance, got to see the Dogs produce an eight run seventh inning that was more than enough to finish off the Reading Phillies. We’ll definitely have to catch a few games in August when we’re up here for real.

After the game, we made our way down to Old Port to catch some live music at Bull Feeney’s on Fore Street. This is the third time we’ve been to Old Port at night, and the second time at Bull Feeney’s. If you like live music and a great social scene, I highly recommend the second floor of Bull Feeney’s on a Friday or Saturday night. The windows were open, the funk band was jamming, and people were dancing and having a great time. We’ll definitely be spending some time there when we move up here. Very highly recommended if you’re into live music and good beer.

Three apartment appointments so far, plus a realtor or two. I’m hopeful we’ll find a place. Either way, I have my camera, so we’ll bring back some pictures.