Tralfaz

Tag: renting

  • Apartment Living – Maintenance

    Apartment Living – Maintenance

    There is one benefit of leasing an apartment (or even a house) that I was looking forward to: Your landlord is responsible for all the routine maintenance. No longer if the plumbing springs a leak, or a drain clogs, or a hot water heater dies, do I need to call a repairman or roll up my sleeves and get it fixed. Woo hoo. Or is it?

    Alas, there are downsides. We have had a couple of minor issues, and one major issue. The minor ones were simple things (a broken door knob, and some irrigation issues at our old temporary place, and a broken built in microwave).

    I suspect that if there was something urgent, the maintenance team would be very responsive, but anything else will take some time.

    After living here for less than 2 weeks, our Microwave broke. Just stopped working. Checked the breakers, checked the outlet, alas, it was dead. Sigh.

    Called the office. The next day their maintenance man came and tried the same things I did. No luck.

    Sidebar: He claimed that it was “Brand New” and that it was installed just before we moved in. Total bullshit, as the plastic facade has been scrubbed with something like a 3M green scrubbie… Nice try to guilt us.

    They ordered a replacement (the brand is Hotpoint, not a typical brand), and it would take a week to arrive.

    Sigh

    Friday it arrived, but it was too late for them to replace it. So it will be Monday between 9:00 and 11:00AM.

    It sucks to not have a microwave.

    If it was at my house, where I owned it, I would have gone to Lowe’s and bought a new microwave the next day, and replaced it myself.

  • Apartment Living – Competitive Laundry

    Apartment Living – Competitive Laundry

    Continuing on in the vein of apartment living adjustments, this episode will be about the laundry situation. As the units do not have hookups for washers and dryers, we have four laundry rooms spread across the campus. Open from 9:00AM until 10:00PM, they are convenient oases for those needing to do laundry.

    Of course, there are wrinkles.

    First – machine hogs

    The doors unlock at precisely 9:00AM, and by 9:00:32 all the washers are full and running. The early crowd gets in and monopolizes the rooms.

    This drives my wife nuts, as she walks down with our laundry in a basket to find all the machines occupied, even when she is early (for her).

    Second – broken machines

    The MachinesAs the tenants aren’t the owners of the machines, they often are out of service. Perhaps they overfilled it, and ran it too full, or perhaps it is just time for something to break. Regardless of the root cause, far too many of the machines are inoperable.

    There is of course a phone number to call for service, and tenants can call, but most do not. In fact I would say that virtually none of them will call. They seem to assume that the property management team will track and report the non-functioning machines. But since they do not do their laundry, unless someone complains, they do not know to call.

    My wife has reported broken machines in three of our 4 laundry rooms. Finally they are being fixed. Hopefully, that will reduce the contention for the machines.

    Rays of light

    One thing that is cool, is that instead of needing a fistful of quarters, the machines use smartcards that are rechargeable. No need to make a special trip to the bank to buy rolls of quarters.

    Summary

    Life in an apartment is interesting. Having lived in condo’s and houses for the last 15 years have insulated me from some of the frictions that are in normal lives. So it is good to experience the other side.

    I am just hoping that we can afford a house when our lease is up here and we can move into something that is more permanent.

  • Apartment Living – A series

    My wife and I have embarked on a new journey. As we wait for our house to sell in Arizona, with the fear of destroying our down payment for a house in temporary housing, we have punted and signed a lease on an apartment. Fortunately, we found a place that was happy to have us with our greyhounds. Yay.

    This series of posts will chronicle our time here, and the fun that it will surely entail.

    (more…)