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Flat Hunting
…except, of course, it’s not a “flat”. A “flat” is what you get if you drive over some big pointy nails. “Flat” is what you become if you walk under a Chevy Suburban. “Flat” is how Ikea furniture comes packed. “Flat” is how a weak joke sounds if you wear it too thin.
It is, at any rate, not a place where Americans live.
No, when I set out looking for a home, I was definitely “apartment hunting”, whatever my British vocabulary might think.
Finding a rented apartment in the Bay Area is actually ludicrously easy, and needn’t involve a single wide-grinned, grandmother-selling Real Estate Agent. The key here is the “apartment communities” which seem to be a mandatory feature of every other intersection across the whole of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain view, Palo Alto and (I’m sure) every other town roundabout.
The idea is simple: someone builds a large number of apartment buildings, throws in a pool, a gym and optional other amenities, and then rents the whole lot out. Because they’re generally so big, they have full-time leasing offices so you can wander in, grab pricing information, take a tour of the complex and an empty apartment, and even sign up on the spot.
They’re fast and efficient, so you can effectively review 4 or 5 complexes in a morning, which is generally enough to get a feel for what’s available.
The Renaissance Apartments, where my temporary accommodation was, was one such complex, albeit on the expensive side.
Once you’ve visited 5 or 6 places, you pretty much know the parameters you’ll make a choice on. These tend to boil down to:
- Price
- Location
- Decor of the apartments
- Other facilities
There’s really not much else to it.
An interesting point: very few of these complexes have washer/driers in the apartments – they all feature laundry rooms, one per floor of an apartment block. Newer complexes do sometimes have private washing facilities, but you can factor in $200/month extra on the rent for the privilege.
I tried to take in a wide-ish spread in terms of area – I saw a brand-new place in Santa Clara (own washer, high rent), a newish place in Mountain View, an older place in the same town, and several complexes in Sunnyvale.
I decided against living in San Francisco even without looking there, just based on the commute. Having seen San-Fran-based fellow workers panicking about trains or cursing the highways since I made that decision, I’m hugely glad of my choice.
So, in the end I settled for a complex called Fair Oaks West, in the middle of Sunnyvale. Overall, it had the most going for it, viz:
- Newly, neutrally decorated apartment with the right amount of space
- Just about the cheapest I found
- A *really* nice pool…
- 15 minutes from work
- A co-worker lives here, which gives me someone to play tennis against, and got me $300 off the first month’s rent.
Securing the place was easy enough, too. A standard rental application (with that all-important Social Security number playing its part) and a $500 deposit, followed by a 3-day wait for credit references (of which I still have none, being new in these here parts).
After that, I had to provide the first month’s rent, and evidence that I’d opened an account with the electricity company PG&E and I had the keys.
The only way that the process could have been smoother (and a twisted part of me wonders if someone, somewhere has done this) would have been a drive-thru rental. It’d be easy enough – drive up to the window, get the pricing information, drive past an open “demonstration suite”, file the paperwork at the end.
That having been said, it was still the easiest time I’ve ever had looking for a home. If London had apartment complexes, I’m convinced the entire place would be more civilised.
