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.