We got into Cambridge on a Saturday night and barely had time to catch our breath before we were scheduled to look at 3 houses on Sunday. The first house we looked at, I had seen on Craigslist. It was located in the historic district of town and it was at the upper end of what we wanted to pay for rent. Long story short, it was dismal. I started to worry that a house of that condition might be the best thing we could afford, which was really discouraging. But, we were scheduled to look at two houses that afternoon, both with the same landlord, so, I held out hope.
Backstory: When we were in Wisconsin we started combing all of the real estate websites in detail. Several of the real estate companies in the area do rentals along with sales, but you kind of have to search for them. On a website that I hadn't ever checked before, I came across a house for sale that was also listed for rent. I emailed a quick note to the agent and within minutes I got a call from him. When I told him we were looking to rent, not buy, he referred me to his assistant who he said was handling that property. So I called his assistant, and she kind of quizzed me about our credit history, what kind of tenants we are, why we were moving to town, etc... I must have passed her test because then she said, "This house is actually owned by my parents. Here is my mom's number, give her a call and tell her you talked to me." So I called her Mom and gave our whole schpeel again about who we were and why we were moving. She also told me that they had another home for rent that wasn't listed anywhere yet that we could look at as well. So, after talking to three different people, we had two more potential houses! It was just sort of funny to us that we had to talk to three different people to find out of we could look at the house.
So Sunday afternoon we pulled up to the first house and met the landlords. This one was also in the historic district. One of the things I liked about this house immediately was the brightly colored front door. The landlords were a no-nonsense retired Police Chief from a nearby town, and his sweet wife Miss K. They had made it clear on the phone that they don't want to rent their homes to just anyone, so we hoped we were making a good impression. Having a cute 3-year old helped soften up these grandparents. As soon as we walked in it was obvious that this house was in way better condition than the house we had looked at in the morning (although the age of the house and the layout were very similar). This house had probably been better taken care of in the past, and then the Chief and Miss K had put a lot of work into it as well. Other perks were a big, fenced backyard with a really nice toolshed and a driveway. Because of how old the neighborhood is, most homes do not have driveways or garages, its all street parking. So, it was a big deal that we would have a driveway.
After looking at the colored door house, the Chief and Miss K took us to their other house. This one was on the outskirts of town on a dead end street. They had kept up this house really nicely as well but the location was really inconvenient for both of our jobs and for Lucia's preschool. We told them that we had one more house we were going to look at on Monday and we would let them know what we decided the following day.
Monday we had planned to look at one last house. We had driven by this house and really wanted to see the inside before we made a decision. It was just down the street from Lucia's pre-school and was in a neighborhood with big backyards, definitely a more suburban feel than the homes we had looked at in the historic district. The house was nice, but wasn't going to be ready to move in right away.
We went back to the Marsh House, put a movie on for Lucia and talked through all of our choices. Ultimately, we made the phone call and chose...
