House Hunting in the Middle

I'm a bit frustrated. The building I love has become so incredibly annoying that I can hardly wait to leave it. The adjacent building has added 9 floors to itself, completely blocking all of our windows. We have to draw the shades so as not to draw the attention of the workers 8 feet outside the windows. But the shades don't block the noise. 7am sharp, every morning.

I've always said that the building is wonderful, it's just everything around it that's bad.

So, we've made the decision to move (possibly to Brooklyn). Our lease is up April 1st, and that's no joke, so the time to be looking elsewhere is now. Ideally, we'd want to overlap a little with our current lease to make the transition easier.

We've toyed with the idea of buying an apartment, especially with the market coming down so quickly. But the market isn't quite there yet, and we don't want to commit ourselves to a mortgage when our own industries aren't the most stable. And the process is so long. We've spent more than a month looking at properties on weekends, just to see what's available. And many of those properties will still be there if we start looking again later. It takes ages to negotiate a price, go through the process, and close. Far too long for our needs right now.

Meanwhile, with the rental market in NYC, the attitude is "now or never." If you look at an apartment, find that you like it, and fail to sign the lease that day, it's probably gone tomorrow. This too is abetting a little with demand falling off in this economy, but the prevailing attitude is still there. We've got an appointment for Saturday in Brooklyn. If we see something we like, we have to make the decision to live there immediately. There's no time to consider other neighborhoods, or sleep on it. Yes or no. Now or never.

I want the middle road. I want to be able to compare and consider apartments, to take the time to feel out the neighborhood, and what it would be like to live in a certain place. I want to learn about the building--where is the laundry? The recycling? But I also want the speed and ease of finding a place soon, and not spending weeks to months negotiating and signing a lease.

Tomorrow I may have a new address.