The long hunt

By Monika Patel

Searching for an apartment in Evanston has been an interesting and at times frustrating experience.

One of the first things we learnt on coming to Northwestern was that the apartments near it are VERY EXPENSIVE. I have friends in other cities that live in spacious apartments and pay approximately half of what I paid for my first month’s rent at Englehart. Armed with this terrifying bit of information, and having concluded that if we stayed in graduate housing for the academic year we’d probably be bankrupt by the end of it, my room-mate and I began looking for an off-campus [read cheaper] apartment to move into in September.

The first thing we did was to get ourselves a map. Being new to the country and having no cars of our own, we thought that the new apartment should be close to our departments. So, we thought that we should walk around the neighborhood and look at all the available apartments. Since we were walking everywhere we would also be able to figure out when far became too far. So every day after class, there we were, walking, using my cell phone and leaving phone messages for every ‘For rent’ sign we saw. By the end of the week, we had worn out shoes, very few appointments to see houses and much weaker spirits.

Then we decided to get onto the Internet. We did it all: craigslist.org, rent.com, the off-campus housing site of Northwestern University. More phone calls and a few more appointments followed.

We went to all the appointments we made and managed to see many houses and to meet many prospective landlords. I remember the pretty red house two blocks from campus -- it was fabulous and the family who owned it HAD A DOG! That almost convinced us to rent it. We also thought that if we were nice to the landlord he might let his dog come upstairs to our apartment once in a while. It took well-meaning friends a lot of time to convince us to look beyond the cute dog – the rent was quite beyond our means.

I remember another house we saw. The landlady called and said that we could come see it any time that day, so we went as soon as we could. We knocked on the door of the house, only, there was no answer. Having walked a long distance and in no mood to give up – we decided to keep knocking for a few more minutes. After some time, the door did open to reveal a fat, hairy man in shorts, holding a can of beer and blinking at us with “What are you doing here?” written all over his face. We explained why we were there, and finally I saw a flicker of recognition on his face and he let us in. The apartment was a disaster: we stepped around empty pizza boxes strewn all over the floor and tried not to look at the heaps of dirty clothes thrown everywhere. Needless to say, after seeing the apartment in that condition we did not feel like renting it.

Our apartment hunt has taken us everywhere: from Central Street to Chicago Avenue and from Sherman Street to Ridge Avenue. We’ve seen all kinds of apartments – small and big, cheap and expensive. We’ve been to apartments so nice we were scared to walk into them, and to apartments so dirty we had to hold our breath all the time we were in them. We have calculated and recalculated how much money we can afford to spend each month on rent. We have bargained with landlords, and have reduced a $1,300 apartment to $1,100 and a $1,000 apartment to $900. We convinced a landlady to give us a microwave if we moved into her apartment. We also convinced at least two other prospective landlords to give us the first month’s rent free. In this respect, I must mention that the ISI practica sessions on apartment hunting have been very helpful. It is because of the sessions that we know how to get the good deals!

We have now narrowed down to two or three choices. When I look back on the past two weeks of apartment hunting, I can say I learned a lot. I believe that my search has almost come to an end, and it feels good to dream of a nice, warm home with lots of home-cooked Indian food in the refrigerator!