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Whirlwind
**9:00 am:** Rob [1] and I leave Condo Conner for Find-a-Home, a free (to us)
service to locating places to rent.
**12:00 pm:** Rob and I have already filled out the applications to live in
an apartment and are heading for lunch.
I wasn't really expecting this to happen quite so fast, but there you go.
It started yesturday when Rob sent me a few listings for rentable homes in
Boca and I started calling the numbers. The first one I called was to a
company called Find-a-Home located in Pompano Beach just a few miles away.
The person who answered said they have hundreds of listings and the service
(for us) is free to use. So Rob and I decided to try them out and look at a
few places, and on Saturday, go back with Spring [2] when she's not working.
We left the house around 9:00 am to make sure we have plenty of time to see a
few places. We arrive and are immediately met by Lori, a frazzled mom-type
who is always chattering away. She hands us a questionaire to fill out while
she's answering the phone for a few minutes.
Over the next hour she pretty much grills us on what we are looking for—
pressing for details all the way. Which city? How much? Do you care if it's a
townhome? And in between, Rob and I kept adding details—no association. No
gated communities. No restrictions on vehicles (at which point, we had to
digress and tell her about Rob's hearse [3]).
After all this, she tells us she has a rental community in mind; two story
townhomes with private fenced in yards, many trees around located in Boca
Raton. She's describing the unit (which is a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom unit) as I
realize I know what apartments she's talking about—the same units that our
friend JeffK lives in, located in South Boca Raton.
That is indeed the place. It sounds agreeable to both Rob and I and all three
of us drive out to look at the unit. There we met The Rental Manager (who's
name I forgot, so she'll be referred to as TRM), an overly friendly woman who
was good friends with Lori. Rob and I were then taken to the model, which
sold us immediately. Nice construction, decent layout (although the kitchen
is a bit small, but comes with microwave, and the downstairs bedroom isn't
much larger than a walk in closet), huge master bedroom; master bath has a
Roman tub with jacuzzi implements, and the second bedroom (with private
bathroom) that is fairly sizable. A porch spans between the two bedrooms and
overlooks the fenced in yard. The mirrored stairwell won't be in the unit
we're taking.
And they have nooooo problem with Rob's hearse.
And so we found ourselves back in the rental office filling out paper work
for background checks, employment checks, etc., etc. The sureal part was Rob
listing me as his current landlord (“No Rob, I am not evicting you.”). Moving
in will be fairly cheap and fairly soon if we're accepted—February 5^th.
The only hurdle will be passing the checks. If that goes, and we do move in,
then I'll work on getting Condo Conner rented out.
[1]
http://www.tragic-smurfs.com/
[2]
http://www.springdew.com/
[3]
gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2001/08/08.4
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