Obi-J

A little background: A few months back the building in which we rent our apartment was sold. When our new landlord came by to have us sign a new lease she let us know our rent was going up $200. Quite ridiculous. Unfortunately, Oakland and any city, including those that have really strict rent control, will allow owners to raise rents to cover debt service costs. In other words, someone can buy a place for way more than rent can cover the mortgage and then pass those enormous costs on to the tenants. Technically, she could’ve raised our rent more than $800!! However, the rental market won’t support these kinds of increases so they’ll generally try to keep the increase to market rate. In our case, it was at the high end of market rate.

In addition to the higher rent, our landlord was also planning on kicking out our neighbor and moving in. This is legal of course, and while disappointing, understandable that she’d want to live in the place she bought. However, I’m not at all interested in living next to my landlord. She could be an absolute sweetheart, but I’m not taking any chances of random knockings and such. And the $200 rent hike didn’t set a very neighborly tone. So the plan was to move.

We’ve been casually looking a lofts around Oakland. Yeah, it’s all trendy to want to live in a loft, but I like space and high ceilings, and these are live/work lofts that while spacious, aren’t all decked out. About a month ago we looked at a loft at Peralta Studios, but it was $150 more than our newly raised rent, and while a beautiful space, the kitchen and bathroom were a bit lacking. But mostly I couldn’t justify paying even more. It’s one of those things in life I’ve had to accept. Just because I want something doesn’t mean I need it nor should I pay for it. After looking at another space I regretted not going for that loft, but what could I do.

Our landlord hadn’t given our neighbor the eviction notice so I was sort resigned to sticking around, but while trolling craigslist I saw another loft came available at Peralta that was a bit smaller and even less than our original rent. There was an open house posted, but I knew it’d get snatched up quick. So we gave the building manager a call in hopes of taking a look before the open house. She was happy we called because we asked that she call us if anything else came available, but had lost our number. So we were lucky enough to get a sneak peak. We looked, we liked, and yes, we leased!!

We move in June 11th. Housewarming shortly thereafter. Woo Hoo!!