It's the dreaded lease renewal time again and, after a brief foray into the world of apartment searching, I've decided to stay were I've been for the part 2 years, for another year.
I only had a week or so to find somewhere to live when I was planning to move to the USA. I didn't get much money from my employers to help me with my move, so everything was done on the cheap. I spent a week in February of '05, web searching apartments on www.forrent.com and driving round apartment complexes. It was rainy season in Northern California, and it chucked it down all the time whilst I was doing this. On the last day of my search, I happened to drive past North Park - I hadn't even had it on my list.
North Park Apartment complex is a huge new complex, just down from Cisco's corporate headquarters, down from Tasman and North First, San Jose, if you know the area. The confusing thing about North Park, is that it's so big, that they market the different sub complexes separately. This is a bit stupid, as it tends to confuse the customers, that's why this place was not on my list in the first place. Also, the different sub complexes don't talk to each other - when I was looking for this place, I was originally talking to "The Oaks at North Park", I was talking to that part of North Park as it was the one nearest to the road. There are now five different sub-complexes here and they are all named after trees, and I told the Oaks that I didn't mind what type of tree I lived in, but they could only talk about the Oaks. Marketing advice - don't diffuse your brand, leverage off your organisation, don't operate in silos! I eventually ended up in, what was then, the newest part of Noth Park, purely because the person I was first talking to at the Oaks, had moved to work in the Laurels!
But that little niggle aside, I've really been pretty happy here since May 2005. You can give yourself nightmares by looking at aparrtmentratings.com, but most people posting negatives there seem to be people saying more about themselves, than the apartments. One described the management here as "nazi management". If language is a currency, we should spend it wisely, it devalues the currency if we abuse language like that. Nazi's killed 6 million jews, the management here held back part of someones deposit, I think I sense a difference in magnitude of the crime.
I deciced to go for the upper end of the apartment scale, there are loads of lower rent complexes in this area - but I decided that it was important to have somewhere nice to live, if I was going to live in a strange country. I think this was a wise decision. The only problem I now have, is that I got this apartment at a jolly good price, because they were trying to fill the place. So, we are on this year on year contract here and the rent is nudging up by over $100 every year. This is a real pain in the arse, as it means I'm marginally worse off every year, as, bonuses aside, my pay rises are not keeping pace with the rent rises.
Having not been pleased with this years proposed $180 rise, I decided to shop around. Also, I used to be based in the office that's 8 minutes (depending on the lights!) from North Park, but we got moved to the office that's 25 minutes drive, so this place has lost it's locational / work advantage.
However, surprisingly enough, I found that even with the latest rise, I'm still getting a good deal here. As I often work from home, I have a lovely home office here, so I wanted a 2 bedroom place. The going rate for a 2 bedroom place in a decent complex seems to be upwards of $2000 a month - wow. The only other place I seriously looked at this time was up the road in Sunnvale, and the apartment manager I spoke to there asked me where I lived, and she said - "we often lose customers to there", refreshingly honest. It was an OK place, the fitness suite was a ton better than the token effort we have here. But, having negotiated my rise here down to an additional $110 a month, I was being asked to pay the same as I'm currently renting a 2 bedroom place here, for a one bedroom place there. I did a spreadsheet (good old spreadsheets!) and found that, as I also had to take the place they had on there 2 weeks before I needed it, so I'd be paying for 2 places at once for 2 weeks, I was on a loser over the year. I'd be paying more in the round, for a smaller place.
My one major disappointment with this is that I checked out Sunnyvale on wikipedia and I found out that the place that Buffy the Vampire Slayer lives is called "Sunnydale", but they used a zip code for the fictional "Sunnydale" in the show and it was Sunnyvale's zip code! I've never seen the show myself, but my sister would have been very impressed!
So, another year at the Laurels at North Park, cross your fingers for the rent rise next year! It's nice and sunny, was new 2 years ago, it's reasonably quiet, although it was a lot quieter when it was half empty when I first moved in, the walls are quite thin, and near the light rail line that can take you to the pub in half an hour.
However, there was a scary notice in the elevator last night, it said something like - "Thank you to all residents who expressed their concern, the emergency sump pump is broken and awaiting repair, this not a hazard to residents". I don't really know what a sump pump is, but I used to work in the water industry and I know what sewage smells, smell like - and I can detect a familiar smell now from the air conditioning vent - oh well, nothing in life is ever perfect!
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