Looking at apartments: JAX addition

So my mom and I flew into Jacksonville late on a Wednesday and were flying back out late Saturday night. I knew that we would spend most of Thursday and Friday looking at places and that most of the work needed to be done before I landed in Jacksonville. I had come up with a list of apartments that I liked online (probably 6 A-list and 8 B-list properties), I also had written down the things I liked about the properties so that I could quickly remember which ones I liked and which ones I didn't. I will admit that having a dog and some random specific things that I will not have in my apartment made it a little difficult to like lots of properties.

Before we left for dinner I drew up a map of the city and where the properties were that I liked, previously I just used alphabetical order or even just the order in which I found them. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't driving all over the city and back-tracking since I hadn't paid attention to location.

Well this is upside down but you get the point

In the morning of the first day we started with the closet property which also happens to be the one that I loved the most. I took about 3 pictures in the unit and I am not even sure we got the whole tour, I didn't see the dog park or even the rest of the property (didn't realize that until later). From there went headed out to see several more properties, one of my favorites didn't have any openings. I will admit now that I was not overly impressed with many of the properties that we saw that day and it made me panic. Before lunch we toured one that I had liked online but I was so unimpressed once we got there, I also might have been hungry (never a good thing). We toured another one right before we headed to the beach for a break.

After the beach we found a Starbucks, which was the saving grace of this trip the wifi and coffee saved us twice. Since I was in a silent panic about having choices because at this point we hadn't seen a first floor apartment and I didn't like some of the ones we had seen. Then I opted to see apartments that I didn't even like online, that was stupid. Eventually we called it a day and I was lost as to what to rent.

On Friday we spent the morning at my new job and then out to lunch. We toured one last property, which had a first floor apartment for an extra $75 on top of the most expensive rent. Also, we had to wait about 20 minutes to get a tour, which kills me. I also didn't love that she kept talking about seeing my students around the property (not the way to get my on board).

So back to Starbucks... I made a pro/con list while my mom read and I could see on her face that she was panicking too.

The list was crazy helpful, at some point it came down to who had what I wanted for the price that I was willing to pay. I found it interesting that a big part of my decision was how good the property would be for Lily. I think I would have rented the most expensive property for her but at the end of the day I think we will be super happy with the one we chose.

The kitchen, major selling point

This is our building!!