How to Find an Apartment Part II

Week 2 of apartment searching. This time there is a strategy. The local paper on Saturday’s comes out with a classified section that lists all apartments available, often including a time for one showing during the day.

7am: we pick up with paper and map out a plan. Because the area of choice was already decided, it would be easy to see several places because they were all near each other. Though we missed our first showing, there were several more to come.

And thus it began. It was as if we were a herd of animals being directed in each and every direction. We quickly realized that we weren’t the only people in the city looking for an apartment. We had competition! We’ll, it was more like beggars fighting for the leftover scraps. Though some of the places we saw were significantly better than the original 8, it was still no Shangri la. Several places had bits and pieces of what we want but it was very difficult to find an actual place that had it all!

A full day of searching and the pressure of needing to make a decision quickly, we decide to pick our top 3 and see what happens. We did have one other slim lead that was the showing we missed first thing in the morning. As I am unemployed, I was able to secure a viewing early in the week to see if we really missed out on anything or to justify that it was worth the extra 20 minutes of sleep over the weekend that made us late.

It took no longer than 30 seconds to make the decision once I entered. Not only was this the most fully furnished place I have found so far (which includes a TV, stereo, A/C, dishwasher, and all the furniture and kitchenware), it had the most amazing view I had thus seen (see below).


As the photo show’s (yes, that is the Opera House and Bridge on the right), I am no longer homeless or squatting in our fellow Canadians living room but finally we have something to call our own.

Lesson of the day: (follow the 3 p’s) being persistent, patient and pretty damn lucky will help in being successful in anything you do..

-lone asian