We drove out to Providence Christian College yesterday to pick up some books for my classes before driving to Pasadena for a 10 am appointment to see an apartment. It was only $1000/month for a 1 bedroom place, which is less than we paid when we lived in Pasadena 3 years ago. It was a fine place, but had green carpet and no dishwasher and the bedroom might have been too small for our bed. So that one was pretty much out.
We then made some calls about a place perfectly located, near to Wild Oats grocery store and next to the shopping centers on Lake Avenue. However we didn’t even venture in — the screen door was falling apart and the paint outside was chipping. Sadly the picture on the advertisement was of the front house rather than the chipping-paint house behind it that was actually for rent. We then drove up and down nearly every street in Pasadena, or at least it felt that way.
The “I’d-never-ever-live-here” prize goes to one place that hadn’t been cleaned, was covered with ‘Happy Easter’ stickers and had black spots on the cream carpet. Not to mention the unexposed wires… However, there was a very cute apartment on California Street but the bedroom was only about 9 feet across and the closet about 3 feet across. It was sadly, just too small.
Here are our top choices so far:
Tied for a top position:
2 bedroom at Sierra Bonita
I don’t know if it’s overly optimistic, or a bad sign, that one of our top considerations thus far we haven’t even seen inside of yet! However the price seems good and there’s a washer/dryer in the flat which makes me happy. There’s an open house on Saturday. The street is also lovely with lots of trees.
2 bedroom at S Madison Avenue
This is the same street we lived on when we lived in Pasadena before. Granted the place isn’t much to look at from outside or even from the brown painted fence. However, it’s very nice inside, has very clean carpets and new stone tile in the kitchen and bathroom as well as front and back enclosed patios and lots of storage space.
We submitted an application for this place but don’t know if we’ll be given first or second consideration. I called about it and a woman told me that the property manager was on his way to pick up another application; she recommended we try to fax it to their office before he returned so we could have first dibs. We tried our best to rush to Kinkos and pay the ridiculous $5 fee to fax 5 pages locally, but we’ll just have to see what happens.
Then we have a:
2 bedroom 2.5 bath at Marion Avenue
Again we haven’t seen inside of this and it’s more space than we need, although from the outside it looks very nice (it’s the blue and white townhomes behind the front house). I hope we can see it on Saturday.
2 bedroom 1.5 bath at S Sunnyslope
Our friends, Ken and Gillian, went to the open house for us last weekend and took some pictures of the property because it’s on their street. That sounded too good to be true — walking to a friends’ house and back! It’s like we weren’t living in southern California! But there are only 2 a/c units and the kitchen is sort of blase and the bathroom not so nice. I also am not a fan of the rock wall fireplace. But it is still an option especially as it has new carpets and a dishwasher.
We’re going back up to Pasadena on Saturday for the open house at the Sierra Bonita property and hope to find a place by then. We figure more people will be around to show the properties on a weekend as well.
GOOD NEWS on the car front. We saw an older Jetta we liked on Wednesday and we’re going to see another on Saturday; both are priced well. So Lord willing we should at least have a car by this weekend!
Bryce’s Edit: We’ve been informed that we have first priority on the Madison Ave. apartment. They said we are “just the kind of people they want to rent to”, and they’re just waiting for our credit check to give us the place. So that’s good news. I think I want to take a look at the Sierra Bonita place on Saturday before we commit, though. So we may have to stall for a few hours. At any rate, it’s good to know we have options.
Regardless of which place we get, it’s starting to look like we will be dishwasher-less, much to my dismay. We’re planning to hire a maid, and will be accepting applications shortly.
