Please tell me people don't live in these places

Apartment hunting is miserable. We're in Austin now, looking for a place to live in the fall. We have a week or so here--we're not leaving until we've found a place we're happy with--and so far, it's been pretty awful.

Our first day, we worked with an apartment locator. That didn't go so well. He took us to see a few properties, starting with a duplex he said was a gem. I was pretty excited about it on the way over but as we pulled up, o my. Wow. Not so hot from the street. He assured us it was better inside but you know, it really wasn't. Partly, this was owing to the loadie guys who lived there and the thick layers of dog hair covering everything, which gestures toward their questionable cleanliness standards--and friends, my standards are really not all that high--and it was partly because the place was just crap.

If this is a gem, I'd hate to see a lump of coal.

Not quite in the realm of please tell me people don't live here, though. That came later. After half a day with the more or less useless apartment locator, we drove around and collected some numbers for for rent signs and found only one in our price range. Despite the fact that it was only 700 square feet, we decided to take a look at it because it was in a fantastic neighborhood with a great school and a park half a block down the street.

I cannot stress to you how not good this house was. It was tiny--we knew that--but then there was the bizarre looking linoleum, the lack of interior doors, the fact that none of the kitchen cabinets closed properly, and the general deterioration. So yeah. No.

I did some more research online and based on that plus my notes from before our trip, we looked at a few more places today. Not too terrible. We have a few options in apartment complexes but that leaves us no yard for the dog and no washer/dryer hookups.

This afternoon, I called about a few more houses. I found two in our price range. The first was taken by another woman just as I came to look at it. I had a look around and it was better than the previous option but in a so so neighborhood with a bad school and no central air. Did I mention it was 100 degrees today? Yeah...the no central air thing is not going to work for me. So no hard feelings spiky purple haired tattooed woman! That house is all yours.

The other, well, I couldn't get a hold of the person and the house seemed okay from the outside and the price was okay but a little high for us and the school was bad. I don't think I care to pursue it.

That brings us to this evening, during which time I've set up appointments to look at two duplexes. We'll do that tomorrow and drive around a couple of more neighborhoods to look for yard signs. That plus one more complex to check out and one email out to someone with a craigslist ad is pretty much all we've got right now. Unless something posts to craigslist tomorrow.

This is seriously miserable. I hope tomorrow I'm logging on to show you pictures of our new duplex because I'm really hoping one of those will work for us. Sadly, something tells me after I've seen them I'll be asking myself whether people actually live in these places. And feeling sorry for them.