The Thrill of the Hunt

Ooooook, I'm going to back-track a little bit with this post...

Tom and I survived our apartment-search trip to Denver! We saw, I think, 17 places over a two-day period and we managed to keep our heads from spinning completely off our necks by taking copious notes, photos and Flip-cam videos. Before we left, I put together a nifty Excel sheet with all of the info for each appointment, which helped to keep us organized and on track as well. We saw everything from an absolutely gorgeous four-bedroom town home with a giant roof deck in the absolute ghetto (legit junk yard next door) to a teeny-tiny loft that's location right across the street from Coors Field made its teeny-tininess almost excusable. We were pleasantly surprised with what we saw, and I was relieved that no one was blowing off our appointments, which was something that I was definitely losing sleep over prior to our visit. (We are flying in all the way from Boston to look at these places - everyone BETTER respect our time!!!)

The blessing and the curse of our visit was that we found two awesome places on Friday - and they were so great that we sort of lost interest in looking at places on Saturday. On Friday, we hooked up with amazing Realtor Rachel, who showed us multiple properties, including the two that we really liked. She was easy to work with, she listened to what we liked/didn't like and she was knowledgeable about Denver in general. Plus, it didn't feel like she was trying to screw us or shove us into a rental just to make a buck. Friday was a good day.

On Saturday, though, we met the antithesis of Realtor Rachel. His name was John Patterson and he was our nightmare. John is about 55-years-old and he specializes in rentals only. Of course, he had a big explanation for why he is a 55-year-old rental realtor - he likes to talk (yes, he said this), he likes to keep his eye on the "trends" in real estate (it's a renter's market!), he got really burned out helping to develop the private residences atop Denver's Four Seasons a few years ago (riiiiiiight), and, as a life-long Denver resident he just likes to help people find places to live in the city he loves so much! At first I felt bad for John - he was shortish with a grey puffy hair-do and he wore tight, belted jeans and cowboy boots. He drove a 1992 BMW 5-series. Like his car, he was about 15 years past his prime. But the sympathy I felt for John quickly faded away when he took us prisoner in his car and proceeded to completely disregard anything and everything we told him.

John: "Are we getting too far outside downtown for you?"
Tom and Melissa: "YES!"
John: "Ok, well before I turn around, I just want to show you..."

There is nothing worse than sitting in the backseat of an aging BMW and listening to a little man drone on about... actually, I don't know what he talked about because I was very carsick and had to tune him out. Tom did an excellent job of pretending to have a conversation with John and of feigning interest in the horrible pieces of property he showed us. When we were finally freed from Mr. John Patterson's greedy clutches, Tom and I ran to the nearest street corner to call Realtor Rachel and tell her to start moving forward with the two properties we had seen the previous day.

Anyway, we ended up signing a lease on a great place near Riverfront Park in LoDo. It's three bedrooms, which means visitors are welcome, has a great kitchen, plenty of open space, a patio for a grill and easy access to bike trails and green space. I can't wait to get out there and start decorating!! The place is ours as of April 1, but we are still working with the relocation company to get an ETA on our stuff in Denver.

Finding a place was one giant hurdle we jumped over and put us that much closer to being in Denver. Only two weeks to go!!