Hmmm... a happy ending, maybe.
After my last e-mail to our landlord about being woken up late at night, and other such noise issues I got a response e-mail from him.
He's decided to kick us out... I suppose he didn't want any more complaints (because we all know he won't change), so he's not going to rent his basement anymore and simply have his son who lives upstairs live downstairs in the suite. He is giving us until October to find a new place to live. That's not so bad, since we've already been looking for a new place for over a month, but not such great news considering he's the idi*t, and that the suites that we have taken a lot at really really sucked, which had discouraged us somewhat.
That being said, my mum had mentioned their neighbours across the street from them had a basement suite and had heard that they were doing some repairs to it and thus, nobody was living in it, and it could possibly be available once the repairs our done. Consequently, I asked my mum to look into it for us.
So, on Sunday Marina and I went out to look at a 2 bedroom suite on Vancouver's East side, which is not exactly considered the "good side" of the city, but not terrible to any extent. We saw the place and it was a horrible slum basement suite of an ugly house. There were tenants still living in it, and being "typical" students there were clothes on the floor, dirt and garbage everywhere, the kitchen was filthy, even a P*RN magaizine laying out in the open!!! Looking past all that and knowing we'd keep it clean we still felt it was a really awful suite.
We got home quite discouraged and then got a call from my mum that their neighbour who has the basement suite was over having a beer with my parents and some other neighbours on their front porch and that we could come by and take a look at the suite.
so we went, took a look and it was really nice. It was slightly smaller than the place we're in now, but really quite awesome! It was a one bedroom, but had lots of storage, and well.... was a great deal.
So we took it!!! But it's not available until mid-September.
If you can believe it, for what seems like a 700-750 sq. ft. suite with utilities included... they only want $650/mo. That's amazing, considering we pay $850/mo. for the place we're in now, plus we pay half of our landlord's utilities (which works out to about $1100/mo.). We're really going to be able to save some money, stay on the good side of the city, close to work, family, Marina's university, bus routes, etc, etc....
There are so many good things about the new place. For instance, my parents' neighbours are both very very quite, they have no pets, and they're out of town a lot. The main reason they have the basement suite is just because they want to have someone in the house for the times that they're not able to be there.
I'm just really excited and thought I'd share that with all of you who have been following my little saga.
Oh, I nearly forgot. My boss told me today about how if a landlord is kicking you out of their suite for them to take it over themselves, then they are required to give you the last month rent for free. That would be awesome if is true. I just gotta read into it more.
Alright, so now Marina and I just have to survive living where we're at for another couple months, then we'll be living the good life!
Cheers,
David
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