advice please on apt hunting for sept

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

hi folks,

yes, sorry to say, another housing post. i'm currently in ann arbor MI but will be moving to the somerville/cambridge/medford/maybe even arlington area in sept to start a job in the alewife area of cambridge. i was all set to fly out the weekend of june 8-11 to look for sept housing when i noticed crazy high airfares and low hotel vacancies...and found out it's graduation weekend for MIT and harvard. urgh.

so my question to you locals: should i wait a weekend to avoid the craziness of two big graduations (tufts doesn't graduate that weekend too, does it)? or will i be able to drive around and look for apartments that i've found on craigslist (that's also assuming that landlords/realtors don't shut down for the weekend)? you might be able to tell from my questions that graduation here is a HUGE deal and you don't drive anywhere near the campus unless absolutely necessary (kinda like those GD football games at the big house...but i digress). more importantly, i suppose, is whether june 8-11 is a good time to find housing for sept 1 move-in, or do listings come up later/earlier...?

i read the post that the good apts are found by referrals from friends or, absent that, current tenants moving out, so if any of you happen to know of a 2 BR, 1-cat friendly apt "near" the red line for around $1500/mo, i would really appreciate hearing about it.

thanks in advance davis sq peeps!

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I'd avoid that weekend if you have the option. Traffic will be ghastly -- maybe not so bad in the Davis-ish area, but on the way to and from the airport, awful. Of course, the great thing is that you don't need a car to see this area; the T + your feet are fine (assuming your feet function well), but it'll still be hectic and if you can have another weekend, you should. In addition, June 8 may be a little early; a lot of listings will come up in July.

However, it sounds like (unlike many non-locals moving to Boston) you are actually being reasonable about your price range, so that will help you a lot :). (Oh, and East Arlington is a fine place to consider for working near Alewife; that's where we live, about a 15 minute walk from the Alewife T, and a 2-minute walk from the 77 bus route, and my husband works at Alewife, and it's just ducky. Davis is plenty accessible. But I would either ask a non-realtor local, or walk from a prospective apartment to the T, before committing to it, because realtors are delusional about how far things are from the T.)

Welcome (soon) to the area!

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

i'm all about walking/biking, except when it comes to apartment hunting and grocery shopping (ahh, the days of taking the 66 bus to and from star market with a 20 lb bag of kitty litter :), so it's good to know that my suspicions/fears on driving that weekend are dead on. well, it's not good that driving will be ghastly, but good that i'm aware of the madness and can avoid it!

somerville friends have said good things about arlington but it's nice to hear it from a current resident, too. is it true, though, that there is no overnight street parking? i'm guessing this might be a non-issue if you have a resident parking sticker, but would that mean that visiting friends with cars wouldn't be able to park on the street overnight? i remember when i lived in brookline 9 year ago that visitor parking was always an issue (and i didn't even have a car), so am trying to avoid that issue if i can.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

There is no overnight parking in Arlington, period; you don't get a resident parking sticker.[1] Your apartment is required to come with at least one off-street parking space. If you have a friend staying overnight, you call the police with their make/model/color/license plate no., and it's fine. (I've done this, and it was utterly routine on their end.)

East Arlington is a really nice place to live, and I walk in to Davis at least several times a week.

[1] I understand there are arrangements for handicapped folks, and I've heard about people *trying* to get variances, but I've never heard of an so-far able-bodied person *getting* a variance.

[ceo]

There is indeed no overnight street parking in arlington, resident sticker or no (I'm not even sure they have resident stickers). However, pretty much all houses have off-street parking. (I believe there are a few that don't, where you basically can't have a car.

However, if you have an overnight guest, you can call the cops and they won't ticket them.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

That realtor-delusion works both ways, and can be in ones favor -- e.g., a realtor may regard anything on "this" side of Broadway as "near" Davis and anything on "that" side of Broadway as "far from" Davis, even though the map distances are the same (and the second is a nicer walk.) This happened to us literally, so I recommend a local friend or at the very least, a good and pre-marked map for visits with realtors.

Realtors spend all their time in their cars and think in terms of "neighborhoods" and not walking distance and public transportation.

[ron_newman]

Tufts commencement is this weekend, not in June. So if you stick to North Cambridge, West Somerville, East Arlington, the commencements shouldn't have much effect on you.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

My concern with the above is that June is way too early for looking for a September 1st move-in. It's been my experience (with 3 intra-Davis moves in the last 10 years) that landlords look for immediate 12-month signers no matter what month it is, and any available apartments in June would go to June signers. Your results may vary, and you might try posting your own CL ad seeking September move-in. But if I were you, I'd push that trip back by a full month, mid to late July.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

I second all of that. Most of the CL posts right now are summer sublets or desperate attempts to fill June.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

This is not the right place for it, but I recognized you in your photo -
I saw my first show ever at Theater First last Sat. night and really enjoyed your protrayal of the Grand Duchess. She's such a sensational character and you did such a great job. Thank you for sharing your art!

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

I agree that you'll do the best if you start looking end of June. Two months out, these days, is really when the landlords are trying to fill places. It used to take longer about 7-8 years ago, I recall.

You can definitely do what you're looking for. We aren't moving out, but do have a 2BR, cat-friendly apt within a half mile of the Davis and Porter stops for $1525.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

hmmm, you sure you don't want to move??

just jokes :) thanks for the advice - i used to live in boston, brookline, mission hill, and JP before i moved to MI and remember looking for sept 1 rentals in june, so that's what i was basing my current search on.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

June is really quite early for what you're seeking. OTOH, I just wanted to put in a note for living in Somerville and working at Alewife. There's a convenient bike path that connects Davis to Alewife, and even goes east past Davis to about Cedar Ave. If you're at all considering commuting on bike (about 2-3 miles), that may help broaden the places you're looking at.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

that's great, thanks! i had heard about the bike path but didn't know the specifics. i plan to bike to work at least part of the year and if i could do it avoiding the streets, even better.

i just searched google for more info on it so i could find a map of the bike path, but haven't had luck finding current info or a detailed map. if you know of a site with a detailed map, could you post it? thanks!

[magid.livejournal.com]

You can get a PDF map of the bike path here (http://www.minutemanbikeway.org/Pages/basics.html) (other info there, too).

[fanw.livejournal.com]

The commenter below has the right link for the MinuteMan path, but it doesn't include the segment from Alewife to Davis or beyond. I actually don't know of an online version of it, but if you're willing to go paper, Rubel Maps does great bike maps for all of Massachusetts including a specific one called the Boston Bike Map (http://www.bikemaps.com/urbmaps.htm). If you do any riding around here, it's the gold standard.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

This isn't quite a map of the bike path, but it will do.

Here's the Cambridge/Somerville bike path mapped on out a Google Map. I ended it where the Minuteman trail begins after Alewife.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=186611

As you can see it crosses a few streets inelegantly. People have different ways of handling the Davis Square and Mass Ave crossings.

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

sweet - thanks! helps a lot. i must admit i'm very excited to be moving to a place that google maps deems worthy of extreme detail - ann arbor gets the "does not compute" message if you try to zoom in too much...

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=+arlington,+ma&ll=42.409199,-71.143427&spn=0.014671,0.054245&t=h&om=1

If you look along the NE edge of Spy Pond, you can see pretty clearly a stripe of road that doesn't look like any of the other roads. That's the Minuteman bike path, between Alewife and Arlington Center. It breaks at Arlington Center[1], but at that scale you can see where it continues to the west all the way in to Bedford.

[1] or as chenoameg says, it crosses Arlington Center inelegantly. It had more rights when it was a railroad.

[ron_newman]

In fact, you can even go beyond Bedford. The paved path ends there, but two unpaved branches continue on, one to Concord (near Old North Bridge) and the other to the Billerica line.

[yangelina.livejournal.com]

FYI I do live right in Davis and work just near Alewife and LOVE my commute. The worst part is dealing with non-rule-following path users (cyclists/pedestrians alike), but once you get used to it, it isn't so bad. It's nice enough to ride in the winter (they almost always plow within a few hours after it snows) and I've only had to walk my bike 2-3 times in the last two years. Actually, it's almost better in the winter...less users. :)

[watchamacallit.livejournal.com]

I have no advice for your apartment search but had to say STRANGERS WITH CANDY!!

jerri blank for president!

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

SWC is awesome - here's hoping the movie version due out later this year doesn't suck :)

and i love your arrested development RIP :( icon! i wonder what the correlation is b/w fans of arrested development, strangers with candy, the office, and curb your enthusiasm...?

Re: jerri blank for president!

[watchamacallit.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I just got my netflix notice... another SWC disc tonight. Hooray!

[siderea]

It's not just Harvard & MIT graduation -- it's Boston Gay Pride weekend. It shouldn't effect traffic north of the river, but downtown Boston will be an Utter Mess.

[cold-cold-water.livejournal.com]

hey, i work in alewife too! i can testify that the davis-alewife commute is awesome no matter how you slice it. if you take the T, you're one of the only people going in the opposite direction and it takes maybe 5 minutes to get to work! then there's the bike path that other people have mentioned. personally, when i walk to work, i usually walk down rindge ave to alewife & over the bridge since it's more direct than the bike path from where i live - just throwing that out there. there's also a bus that goes directly down rindge.

when you start work, you should definitely check out cheddar's in the complex with the cvs and the newbury comics in alewife. it's like the soup nazi but with pizza/sandwiches/salads and is really awesome :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/__the_dude__/]

great info, thanks! i'm finding the MBTA website to be a bit of a black hole RE: bus routes that go to alewife. well, i've found some when you search by location and put in "alewife", but route 83 (which i'm guessing is the bus route you're referring to) doesn't come up since technically, it doesn't look like it goes all the way to alewife. grrr. anyway! thanks for the heads up - i'm now looking at the mbta website more carefully for other cambridge/somerville busses that go to that general area.

[cold-cold-water.livejournal.com]

ahh yes that's because it ends about a block away from the station. annoying!

you might also want to check out the i think 72 or 78 buses from harvard square? depending on where in alewife your work is, and where you get a place, that might be more convenient. they run right down concord ave to the fresh pond rotary area.