House hunting
Mar. 14th, 2010 08:14 pmI've done a couple of new things this weekend. The first was to apply on Saturday for a credit card in my own name - indescribably pointless as the whole thing seems when I've already got one that I've been using for three and a half years, to conform safely to America's system it seems it's wise to use one where you're the primary card holder. So I dithered around looking at the fifty billion possible choices with virtually identical agreements, and got a Chase Sapphire as it was named by someone or other as the best rewards card overall (with Tesco Clubcard-style vouchers available from it) and it doesn't have an annual fee so it won't actually cost anything to use.
The other thing was something that was new to both of us - braving the torrential rain, we took Vanessa the rental car out and visited some open houses, which got steadily better as the day went on. Virtually all of the buildings around the area we're looking are divided into two partitions for two separate occupants - the first that we went to had had an offer accepted the previous night, and the owners were still around because they'd forgotten that the clocks went forward that day. The second was a ground floor space that looked cramped because of having too much furniture. While we were looking around, anther visitor inadvertently stole my umbrella by taking the wrong one from the rack. I took his instead - it's a bit nicer.
But the third one is something that we're already very taken with - it's a large newly renovated place in a very convenient location for us. It's above another space, but the current owner of the building would be living on the floor below, so it's unlikely that he would be anywhere near as bothersome as our last idiot neighbour, and we can't really find anything wrong with it apart from that the bedroom cupboards are a bit small.
Whatever happens with that, though, we've also found an agent that we really like - we had her to ourselves for a long time in the third house, because not many people had braved the rain. We still have a lot of places to look, but things are already... stressful but exciting.
The other thing was something that was new to both of us - braving the torrential rain, we took Vanessa the rental car out and visited some open houses, which got steadily better as the day went on. Virtually all of the buildings around the area we're looking are divided into two partitions for two separate occupants - the first that we went to had had an offer accepted the previous night, and the owners were still around because they'd forgotten that the clocks went forward that day. The second was a ground floor space that looked cramped because of having too much furniture. While we were looking around, anther visitor inadvertently stole my umbrella by taking the wrong one from the rack. I took his instead - it's a bit nicer.
But the third one is something that we're already very taken with - it's a large newly renovated place in a very convenient location for us. It's above another space, but the current owner of the building would be living on the floor below, so it's unlikely that he would be anywhere near as bothersome as our last idiot neighbour, and we can't really find anything wrong with it apart from that the bedroom cupboards are a bit small.
Whatever happens with that, though, we've also found an agent that we really like - we had her to ourselves for a long time in the third house, because not many people had braved the rain. We still have a lot of places to look, but things are already... stressful but exciting.