Hallo!
My husband and I, both from NY originally, have been out in Chicago for the past 5 years, but are aiming to move to the Kingston/Woodstock/Phonicia-ish area when our lease expires this March. We've always have family there (my aunt is a local artist and does Zen Buddhist chaplaincy work -- she was once a Monk at ZMM in Mt.Tremper -- and my uncle ran "Family", a social service organization, in Kingston), and we'll be central to a support system of other family and friends within a 3 hour drive in one direction or another. We're aiming to find a house/side-by-side/townhouse to be our home, rented or rent-to-own, until we can afford to build our own.
We're a non-drinking, non-smoking, currently pet-less (and ok with staying that way for a while, though we love animals) couple with a toddler. He'll be three shortly after our aimed-for moving date. I have a good rental history from 4 places, including the one we're in now, my husband from the latter three of those. This most recent rental is the end-unit in a townhouse strip -- equivalent to living in a side-by-side, multi-family property, so our neighbors can act as a reference for what kind of people we make, for living next to, on top of landlord references. Our lease is up at the end of March, so that is when we're planning the move, although we have already paid the last month's rent, so we could move probably as early as the 16th or so, if necessary. My husband was told by the head of staffing for his company that a transfer would be arranged for him, so we should have a job lined up.
I'm a bit frazzled, to say the least, trying to do this from halfway across the country. Earlier on, it was too early to secure a place, because they were all opening up long before our move, and now that we're close to the move, well, it feels like we have no time left to find a good one. Of all the places we've looked for listings, RentWoodstock.com has by far proven the best for finding potentials that match our needs and price range, but I've only found one such listing now that it's the right time to grab a new lease, and we narrowly missed catching that one. So, if anyone has any ideas, or connections or...I dunno...anything...
The listing we were really hopeful about was for $900/mo. rent (our rental ceiling for out there, but still considered do-able), and they were offering a side-by-side house with 1150 sq. ft., 3 bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a full basement, a garage, a shed, and on a 3 acre property with a stream. The one that would've actually given us as much or more space than we have now (the landlords don't know the square footage of this place, and we haven't had time to finish taking rough measurements, ourselves, yet) -- enough living space for us as a family, for out son's therapy-stuff needs, for a studio (I'm an
artisan), for storage....and let's not forget the LAND...land for blocking off garden space, land for fencing off kiddie play place, and land for LAND. ::sighs:: Now, it's kinda silly to be disappointed by losing the place, since we never found out if it met all our non-spacial wants/needs...but it's really hard not to. Could we get away with less square footage? Probably, depending on how it was arranged. Could we get away with less land? Certainly, though we'd appreciate at least a bit of yard. What is the actual question list we're using to review places? Well, that's for later. If a place isn't affordable and having enough room for us, our car, and a studio for me, then it does us no good if it has a washer/dryer, a gas stove, central heat...
Blah. So anyway...if you happen to know of / notice another miracle rental...would you be so kind as to poke me and point me at it, please? Pretty please? Pretty please with cute toddlers on top?
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