At the beginning of September we received a Notice to Quit from out rental management company. It came out of no where and they refused to tell us why. We called, emailed and texted with the owner. All they said is that they wanted their property back and we had until September 30th to be out AND that we could NEVER rent from them again. I did some searching online and for a Yelp review about how they had done this to other families a few years ago, 12 families all kicked out and told they could never rent from the management company again. Oddly enough that actually made me feel a little better, but still, we had to uproot ourselves and the grandkids, which broke my heart. They are still not back in school yet, that is being worked on and can be a slow process. We were out of the old place on the 30th but had to leave some things behind do to running out of time and space, my car is still not empty. The old place had 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Two floors, each with 2 bedrooms and basement space that was always messy because kids played down there and threw things around. We also had a shared wall with the neighbors. I should also mention that we were on a month to month, no lease was in place at that we were told we had to leave.
The new place is a two story single family home with a basement, so no shared walls with neighbors. We have a small front deck and small back deck plus a patio for our patio furniture. The basement is used for storage and that's it, not useable space for the kids to play. The main floor has a bedroom with a 3/4 bath (stand up shower only), and a nice walk in closet with a lot of shelves, this is my room. No more lugging my shower stuff up and down the stairs. The living room is small but that works out okay because we don't have a lot of furniture in there anyway. The kitchen/dining area is a descent size, my big table fits in there nicely, we just need to get the boxes and stuff out so we can adjust the space a bit more. There is also a 1/2 bath off the kitchen with a washer and dryer. The top floor has 3 bedrooms and a full bath with a shower/tub combo, my daughter and the boys are up there. There is also off street parking, though my daughter parks on the street in front of the house and I park in the driveway. I discovered that our mail is delivered around 9am. We are close to places my daughter likes to go with her friends and her boyfriend is only a 3 minute drive away. The backyard is not fully fenced in and there is no garage but we have not had a garage in many many years so this is nothing new.
I was not and am not happy about being in the city but this is what has to happen for now, we did not have much of a choice. We tried to stay in the town where the grandkids went to school but we couldn't find a place to live out there, either no one returned messages or places we liked were unavailable.
It's been almost 2 weeks since we got keys and moved in. We have a lot left to unpack in our rooms and the common areas of the house. Most of the storage stuff is in the basement but there is still some left in the common areas that need to go down. I am hoping to get my car cleaned out this weekend, we'll see how that goes. We are hoping to be in this house for awhile, we are tired of moving and we will be keeping a lease, even if they say we can do month to month.
At this point my drive to work is about 10 minutes shorter that what I was driving, which is nice but I also have to account for more traffic, the time of day and the weather as well. Yes those things were accounted for previously but being in the city and construction season, it's a bit different, but I can still avoid the highway, which is always nice.
I think that's it for now. I'm at work and have some computer stuff to finish now.
