Finding Home

Microsoft put me in touch with Angela in Seattle, a rental provider, who helped me find an apartment. (Actually, Microsoft put me in touch with Susan on the east coast, who put me in touch with Angela. Every relocation service that Microsoft provides uses multiple levels of agents who contract the person beneath them, the last person contracted being the one I end up meeting face-to-face. When I was shipping my belongings from Grass Valley to Seattle, I met the driver Boe, who was contracted by Ronnie, who was contracted by Joey, who was contracted by Chanda, who was contracted by Microsoft. After a while it seems like Lord of the Rings, where everyone goes around declaring themselves as son of this or daughter of that.) She asked me a few questions about rent and location and sent me a link to a web page that profiled about twenty properties that matched my criteria. Since I didn’t know what I wanted aside from price and location, the profiles helped me make my own lists of must-have and optional amenities and features. My friend Heather advised me to check for several things based on her own renting experience that I hadn’t thought of. By the time Angela and I toured a handful of properties, I had a list of questions to ask and things to check.

I was really nervous about picking the wrong place when touring the properties. It would be my first apartment and, as I said, I had never evaluated apartments before. I was touring near the end of my corporate housing and I needed to find a place soon or start paying $115 per day to stay put temporarily. Since I only had about a week to search, I didn’t have as many properties to choose from, and I was worried that I’d get stuck with something I didn’t like for a year.

Fortunately I really liked the last place we visited. The building was great and the apartment we toured was perfect. The apartment fit my needs exactly and I had a good feeling about it. I decided to put down a deposit, and Angela, the tour guide, and I headed to the office to fill out the paperwork. Halfway through writing my information down, my eyes focused on my pen tip, I hear the tour guide exclaim, “Oh no! It looks like that property is already taken!” My heart sank. I figured there wouldn’t be any others like it available, so I tried to remember the other properties we had visited that day to decide the runner-up. I was lucky, and the tour guide found another property, identical to the first, situated two floors directly above the first and it was only $50 more per month. I thought I was getting the first apartment for a steal anyway, so I gladly took the second.

My apartment building. My apartment has one bedroom and floor plan M.