A Lesson Learned... the sad but true tale of "round one" gone bad

You guessed it... it WAS too good to be true. It's ok if you're thinking "told you so" because you did "tell me so" in your mind as you read my last blog post ;)

Ben and I met up at the leasing office yesterday (he carpools to work so he had his friend drop him off and I left work early to go up there and meet him). When we went there to check the place out for the first time on Sunday, we came in from the White Marsh Mall area - we took some back roads (GPS's are handy!) past some farmland and cows and popped out right there at the apartment complex. Yesterday, I saw things from a different angle. I came in off the beltway on route 7, to be greeted by a homeless person at the end of the exit ramp at the stoplight (grrrrreat). The area itself just looked like the outskirts of the city, which I suppose it is - nothing drastically wrong with it, just generally run-down. Less than a mile, I turn onto a side road and there's the apartment complex. I guess I didn't realize how close we were to the beltway on Sunday. I mean, I've seen it on a map, but I guess it didn't quite register realistically. As I turn into the complex, I pass a group of 6 or 7 rather unsavory-looking older teenage boys (you know the type - jeans around the knees, hats on backwards, bandanas, trying to look bad-ass...). I turn into the complex and park outside the office, waiting for Ben, and these guys slowly mosey on down into the complex, just walking very slowly along the side of the road. One walks up a hill toward one of the apartment buildings (I'm thinking, I can only hope he knows someone in there and isn't just checking things out for himself...). They all set up shop on a corner of two intersecting streets in the middle of the complex and proceed to just hang out there. This isn't exactly something I want to come home to every day, I'm thinking.

Ben showed up just a few minutes after I got there, and I pointed them out to him, and he was equally weirded-out. We still wanted to believe things were ok, so we went in and got started on the application. The leasing lady was waiving our app fee anyway, so it didn't cost us anything. Ben of course asks her "Be honest with me, is this is safe area?" to which she of course responds (in her thick Essex accent) "Oh yeah. Believe me, I've been here 3 months (whoop de doo) and I've never seen the cops called or anything." Oh, you mean during the 9-5 shift that you spend here in the middle of the day? Well then, there must not be any crime here! Then Ben asks, "So there aren't any random strange people hanging around or anything?" "Oh no, not at all" she replies. To which I want to reply, "oh really, what about these kids out there RIGHT NOW?!?!" They were up a bit of a hill from where we were so I knew she couldn't see them from her desk.

So anyway, we finished filling out our applications and asked her for the keys to the model so we could take a few photos of our own. We tried to hug and smile and be excited as we walked around snapping pictures - this was supposed to be our first place - but we were both quite obviously feeling uneasy at this point. We were both very quiet on the way home, except for commenting that we didn't feel nearly as excited as we thought we would. So this morning, all the way to work I continued to feel uneasy. It had put me in an incredibly rotten mood - I was feeling so tense and stressed and upset that I took a detour past my metro stop down into Bethesda to go to Caribou Coffee. I got a turtle mocha and sat in peace enjoying it while I tried to gather myself mentally. When I finally got to work, things just went downhill. I stumbled upon apartmentratings.com. Go there and search "town & country ridgeview" if you need a good laugh, because it was almost comical how stereotypically TERRIBLE the reviews were. Of course I didn't find it funny at the time... it just made me feel incredibly disappointed and STUPID. Multiple complaints of rodent problems, mouse droppings on the floor, bees getting into the apartments, roaches, homeless people in the hallways and stairwells, waking up to no hot water fairly frequently, waking up to no water at all in some cases, vehicle vandalism, muggings... YOU NAME IT, someone had written to complain about it. DEAR GOD. My next step was to check crimereports.com, a site that my mom the cop sent me. And shall I say it again? DEAR GOD. TWO ARMED ROBBERIES, not just within miles or blocks, but WITHIN the complex, in the past month.

SO, since we're not living THERE, the search continues. I feel very stupid, but very fortunate to have found this out AHEAD of time. All we gave them in the way of money was a $100 check to hold an apartment, which isn't supposed to be deposited (just held) until we move in. We were told that it was no problem to get that back if we decided not to go through with it, and worst-case scenario, I can call the bank and stop payment on the check. So that's no problem. Learned an important lesson though. Several, actually. Be careful about trusting the leasing agent when it comes to questions about what it's like to actually live there, check crimereports.com and apartmentratings.com before bothering with applications (or even visiting, for that matter), and if it looks too good to be true, IT PROBABLY IS. We've changed our search a bit - we're not looking anywhere near the stinking beltway, and we've increased our spending threshold a TINY bit. If we want to be in a decent area, we're gonna have to pony up the dough. That's the bottom line. So, we shall see. More to come on that...