Apartment Hunting

Remember how people used to find apartments before Craigslist? No, you don't, do you? Well, they looked in various newspapers for listings, called numbers posted in windows, heard about things word-of-mouth, and scanned bulletin boards.

That's what we have been doing (there are a few listings on Guanajuato Craigslist, but hardly any -- most are for San Miguel de Allende, and hour away from here).

I have been too shy to call the numbers in the listings myself so our current hostel-landladies were nice enough to call for me. Not much luck there, though. Today, I got up the nerve to call the number posted in a window, and got a woman who was utterly flummoxed: no, she's not renting anything. I wonder if I don't know how to dial with the new cell phone, but it has worked other times.

Via Craigslist, we did see one listing and met with the rep, a nice guy from Oregon who has lived here about 5 years now and has a real estate business. We had a short coffee with him and talked about how to look (essentially, all the things we already were doing, plus he'll keep an eye out for us). Then, he showed us the place listed. It's really nice, but might be too small for our needs -- we'll see.

Yesterday the new Chopper came out (the weekly penny-saver type thing with the listings at the back). Most were identical to last week's, with not much that works to our high standards (near the center, furnished, and not just a bedroom for students). However, one was new and Sandra called for us. It was listed as "chalet" style. On the phone, the owner clarified to Sandra that the place was a vacation rental, but gave her the web address for it. The pictures were pretty, if the place was small. So we made an appointment to see it. Up many, many stairs (oh, right, the great view shown in the pictures was not some amazing luck of view without having to climb), we arrived at a place that was just absurd. While lovely in it's appointment, and not bad if we were just staying a week, it was the tiniest thing. It was three floors, but each one was about 7 feet deep and featured one of the rooms: kitchen/bathroom (with the space between labeled as a breakfast nook: see above picture), bedroom, and living room (with a futon couch that could convert the room to another bedroom). It had the width of a small house, and the depths of a hallway. Two of the floors featured nice balconies with the fantastic views, but this was just not going to work.

Word of mouth, at this point, includes telling: the women who run our hostel, the person who cut Peter's hair, the director of the language school, the couple who run our favorite store, the American owner of the best coffee shop in town, the American couple who put us up in Patzcuaro (who heard of a place from a taxi driver), the American couple we met last night at Japanese restaurant dinner, I'm probably forgetting someone, and my favorite: the gas man. After all, who knows what is available more than the guy who delivers the gas?