Today is February 1st. The glorious day that was supposed to be the day we got the keys to our long term house and would finally have some place to put some of our other stuff in, and hang out at leisure that wasn't the size of a matchbox. But, that did not happen.
We knew that the house was going to need a little patching up when we saw it on our house hunting trip. It was, after all, occupied by a man and his three sons ages 11-17. But we had heard about the strict requirements of landlords when one moves out of their apartments or rental homes. Well, when we arrived, we quickly understood why landlords commonly ask for a deposit equal to the a month of 2-3 months of rent. The house was a disaster!
We walked into the house and were greeted by our agent, the landlord's agent, and the woman who was the previous tenant on the lease. All of the main furniture and personal items were gone but there were several misc. items left throughout the house and it had not been cleaned at all. When we looked at the house the very first time, we knew that the previous couple was going through a divorce and that they had only lived there for the last 3 months. As it turns out, a week after they moved into the house, the wife moved out and in with her exboyfriend. This created quite some drama I'm sure for the family and apparently the husband was not taking it so well. The house was in such a mess because they are in a dispute as to who's responsibility it is for the cleaning and damages throughout the house. All the stuff that was left were the things that the wife did not take with her when she moved out the first week. The husband packed up everything, but left her stuff and just didn't tell anyone and left it to her to deal with.
For the past two days I had been having a little bit of "buyer's remorse" thinking that maybe we should get a different house. There was one other house that I really really liked that already had a full kitchen staying with the house (very uncommon in Germany) and a huge walk in closet in the master (almost unheard of in Germany). But it was nearly 300 euros a month more which would have meant not only more a month but more money upfront on an already tight budget. After what we walked into today I thought it was a sign that we needed to jump ship and look into the other house, especially since they apparently negotiate on rent prices like they do on a house purchase in the states. So after a lot of standing around listening to a bunch of people talk to each other, and talk on their phones, in German, and having no idea what was going on, I asked our agent if he would call and just see if the other house was still available. We found out it was and that they would go down from 1650 a month to 1580 a month. After much discussion with the outgoing tenant, the landlord's agent that was on the phone with the landlord, we were told that the current house would be fixed up and professionally cleaned but not available till the 13th or 15th of February. So there was a decision to be made. Let them try to make the house right and wait or go for the more expensive house right now. Then the landlord wanted to talk to us. He had been in Africa the past several weeks and was now in Berlin so he was unaware of how bad things had become. He offered us his good faith that everything would be remedied and apologized for the state of things and asked about the major concerns and agreed to get them taken care of. Well, that made me feel a little more comfortable so we agreed to go around the house and document the damages to be repaired.
Going through the house in that much detail did remind me why I felt it would be a good fit for us, not to mention a price that was very affordable for the space. The last area that we needed to check out was the cellar. The cellar had so much more stuff in it than the rest of the house but the wife said anything we wanted for the most part could stay or she'd get it out. There was a nice closet that would be good for the boy's room, so that was a plus. Then we saw that there was a dryer in the laundry room. Our agent asked the woman about it and she said that it belonged to the house. SCORE! We just got ourselves a dryer. Well, that was one less expense that we needed to spend money on. Next we went into another room where she pointed out that there was a dish washer, an oven, stove, and refrigerator that all belonged to the house! They already had a kitchen so they used their kitchen and put these appliances down stairs. So that saves another big chunk of change!
All in all, it looks like it will work out in the end. Our temp housing ends on the 17th, which is the same day we leave for a trip back to the states. So if we can get our current stuff into the new house on the 15th and our air shipment that has already arrived, then we can still have a place to stay and then come back to a house and start settling in.
Boy oh boy! Not how I thought my day was going to go at all! Not to mention that as we were in the house debating everything, a blizzard was going on our side!
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