It must be said that the apartment was not our 'first choice'. That first choice - the one I waffled on about in the previous post - had already been taken by somebody else. Our agent went to visit the landlady to discuss terms, but she said she wanted to 'honour her word' and meet the other person. In a strange way that made us feel okay as we would have felt really bad if we knew we were usurping somebody else. We wouldn't have wanted somebody to 'steal' an apartment we had expressed interest in, so we're glad we weren't the ones doing it to someone else. It does, of course, mean that we had to go for our second-choice, but it's a bit cheaper and still really great. When we walked into the apartment to sign the contract we quickly remembered just how much we liked it, and how long it had taken us to decide between the two.
Full Passport left a comment on our last post saying that she'd heard of agents using the 'landlord seeing somebody else' story as a way to extract more money, and it's unclear if that's what was happening here. Certainly our agent knew our absolute top price and would have needed to negotiate down. Perhaps he knew he wouldn't be able to get it any cheaper and so was seeing if we would pay more...which we wouldn't. However, we feel everything has turned out okay in the end as we have ended up getting a great apartment that is within our budget (although still right at the top limit!)
As well as the agent who came with copies of the contracts, we were met by two members of the family who own the apartment. We think that the owner was the older lady, although it was her daughter who did most of the discussions and signed the contract. They all spoke English, which will be helpful if we have any questions or issues. Their cousin lives in the same building, and their driver has a room downstairs...so it might seem a bit Truman Show compared to what we have at the moment, but we’re sure it will be great.
We signed the contract to run from the 15th of the June for 13 months (so that it extends beyond the end of the next school year). It's also good to have some overlap with our current place, so that we can move our things across at a leisurely pace. It may mean paying for two apartments over the summer if our current landlord doesn't get another tenant in the meantime, but I'd rather pay for that situation than the stress of rushing to move - especially as we're on the first plane out at the end of term! We do feel a bit bad for our current landlord about leaving our current place, as he's a really nice guy and we've got a good relationship with him. However, 'needs must' as they say, and the fact remains that our current place would be unworkable with a baby.
The new apartment is a 7 or 8 minute walk from where we live at the moment, on a road that
is about as busy as 206 at times. It does feel like the road can be a bit of a rat run, but there's a nice patch of green in the central reservation with a path that can get you across to a much quieter road. The apartment itself is on the second floor,
but has a lift that’s big enough for four adults so will definitely fit a pram. Having a lift was our number one request - anywhere without one was immediately discarded. That's why we're moving. Additionally, the new place has good light during the day, but it won’t get as hot as our current place since the sun is filtered
through the trees and is less south-facing than our current place (we think the new one is SW or WSW. Although the balcony space is very limited (we could probably just about fit 2 chairs on the balcony accessed from the living room) it's good to have a bit of outdoor space if we want it, and know that we can get air into the apartment by opening the door.
There's 3 bedrooms and the master is en-suite. The second bedroom, next to the master, will make an excellent nursery. Guests will have their own bathroom with shower, plus there's a separate toilet right by the living area. The living area itself is really nice with two distinct seating areas (which we may reduce) and plenty of floor space to be covered with baby toys. There's also a separate dining area off to one side which makes the area feel more 'classy' than our current arrangement. Although the kitchen isn't as large and airy as in our 'first choice' apartment it's still much bigger than our current kitchen and has an oven door that appears to close properly! (To see why this is a novelty for us, check out our very early blog post here). The utility balcony off from the kitchen is accessible and has a door that closes properly - again something that can't be said for our current place (we currently wedge it shut with a box of floor tiles!).
The general feel of the new apartment is that it's been very well cared for. It's got neutral decoration and the furniture isn't too gaudy. The floors in the living areas and bedrooms are wood laminate, and they look like they've been recently laid. Although ceramic floors are nice and cool they're also really tough on the knees so since we think we'll be spending a lot of our time playing on the floor with the baby the laminate seems a good thing to have. The floors in the bathrooms, kitchen and corridor are ceramic, though, which makes sense.
When we moved into our current place four years ago, there was dust everywhere. The apartment had been repainted but there were paint splotches all over the floor. We spent ages cleaning it to get it to a condition we liked, and the wonderful Fatma has kept it that way for as long as we've been here. The new apartment appears to have been kept in immaculate condition while it's been empty, so at least we won't have too much cleaning to do after the summer. However, we'd like to keep Fatma and hope that she'll be happy to take on the new apartment!
All in all, we're exhausted but happy but back to work tomorrow!
All in all, we're exhausted but happy but back to work tomorrow!
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