Tips For Apartment Shoppers

...here's a tip for you perspective apartment shoppers. 1920s-era apartments are very charming, but apparently they didn't think about such things as soundproofing back in the day. Compound this with living in Chinatown beneath very traditional Vietnamese neighbors (the wife still goes out in her bamboo wok-looking-hat-thing) and you have a situation where your acoustic guitar illicits stomps from the ceiling after 9pm. Swear to God they stomped on my ceiling one time after I laughed loudly while I was talking on the phone. I feel like I'm back in the monastery!

Now, I don't hate these neighbors, but I wish they'd be a little more understanding. I'd like to bring them down here and be like "Do you hear how softly this stereo is playing? This is how loud I'm playing it when you're stomping about it." I've never had upstairs neighbors that complained before, it's usually me complaining about the noise from the people upstairs.

What pointers would you give to people doing apartment shopping? Any horror stories?

Thank goodness I'm moving to a new apartment complex. And living on the second (and top) floor.

And that you even know how to turn it on! We had to take baths for a week here before I got a hold of the landlord again and asked him how to work it. It's one of those ones where you pull down on the actual spiggit/nipple thing that the bath water comes out of, totally weird. I would've never figured that out.

i was jut noticing today just how unbelievably shitty my shower is. i don't think there's even one good thing about it.

Ask them to spray for critters BEFORE you move in. Also, if it's been vacant for over a year, most likely the gas lines will have to be inspected before they can turn on the gas, which can be a ten day process if you let it get away from you. That's ten days of no cooking and no hot showers!

oh i lived in a newer building once and it wasn't soundproof at all and everyone there were artsey type people and everyone put up with everyone else's noise (the girl apove me liked to have really really really loud sex.....banging headboard and all at 3 am....) but the last 3 months I had some asshole neighbors who would bang on their ceiling/my floor if you even walk on it....one night when i was packing for vacation they went as far as buzzing me on my buzzer......the thing was there was no music no talking....just walking...jackasses

i hope i get bitchy neighbors like those. living with my family has enabled me to be to put up with a lot without trying and it might be fun angering them over small things

We live in an apartment that is, basically, the bottom half of a VERY old house.

One thing we didn't notice when looking at the place -- each room has ONE wall outlet.

ONE.

Try doing that with computers, lamps, TV/VCR/DVD, and various other things. We've done our best with power strips and extension cords.

I did remember to check the water pressure, though. Us long-haired types need high water pressure.

I was in a really old (like, 1910) house for a while. Apparently, there was no grounding for any of the wall outlets, and everything was on fuses. This is a bad combination when your upstairs neighbor turns on the electric lawn mower and melts the fuse and your network card. It didn't matter that I had surge protectors and a UPS - there was simply no grounding of any sort, and the landlady wouldn't do anything about it.

The only positive side of living there was the cheap rent and some furnishings, that's it.

If you're checking out an old place and you have a lot of sensitive electronic equipment, check to make sure the outlets are grounded. You'll save yourself enough money by avoiding a place that doesn't have grounding.

Also, try to check out the apartment when there's a lot of traffic outside. You'll get a feel for how noisy things'll be at night when you're trying to get to sleep and the last thing you want to hear is a horde of drunks outside while Mack trucks rumble by in packs.

I only had one group of bad neighbors, and they were college football players who'd get drunk and want to fight us. Not a good living situation.

upstairs there are children. they like to run around. at 6am.

If the landlord forgets to meet you for an appointment to see the apartment, there's a good chance they'll forget to repair anything that needs to be fixed... of course, if the landlord was in the upstairs apartment taking bong-hits with your neighbor while watching you move in, he probably has a good excuse for forgetting things.

hahahahahahahahaha...wow i thought me and my roommates were the only ones that couldnt figure that out. i sat in the bathroom with the water running for twenty minutes the first time i went in there just tryin to figure out how to make it come out of the showerhead.

in my old apartment complex they tried to give me a fifty dollar ticket because the security guard had to come by and tell me to turn down my music. problem was for those fuckers that it was 1 in the afternoon on a saturday. so i told the security guard to call the cops on me or leave me alone cuz there was nothing they could do to me legally (and yes i had checked the lease and there was nothing about quiet hours, so it was just city law or whatever). yeah thank god it was our last month there because they started tryin to catch us doing bad shit just so they could fine us or kick us out. haha then on the last day we threw all of our furniture out of our third story windows into the courtyard below...that went over well. oh good times.

If you are faced with a gas oven, make sure your landlord explains in GREAT DETAIL the EXACT PROCESS for turning on the gas, lighting the oven, and then adjusting the temperature.

I had been out of town the week after we moved in, and I came home to a hungry roommate who had suffered through cooking pizzas and such on the stove top (the burner pilot light is always on, thank goodness, or she'd have gone insane).

Also, make sure you have a roommate who remembers to turn off the gas. Thankfully, I picked one of the smart ones. No explosions yet.

When I lived in Austin Texas we lived in an apartment for a couple years and when our old downstairs neighbors moved out and the new ones moved in they use to beat the fuck outta the ceiling (our floor) with a fucking broom constantly. It got me so fucking pissed I use to stomp around even louder. I mean- were they fucking serious? The lady above us sounded like a fucking elephant and she probably only weighed 95 lbs soaking wet.- Did we ever bash the cieling in with a broom? No. We adapted.