Signing Aquahaus: Rich and Poor

Check out that awesome
next-door building!

Today we will be (barring any random insanity) signing a contract for a place I've christened "Aquahaus."  At 5pm.  Set your watches--there might be some sort of astronomical sign that occurs at the same moment my pen hits paper because this is nothing short of a miracle.

A very expensive miracle.




******************************

Here's a mini-lesson in Rostock Real Estate for you (you can skip this starred section if you want to fast forward).  There is a university here, with many students.  Actually, this particular year there are approximately 30% more students than there have been any other year, which is probably how I got a job, actually.  You should also know that our income is approximately 30% of what a student makes (I kid, I kid.  But it isn't much-- 1800 euro a month).  So, as you can imagine, we're sort of trying to get the same kind of apartment all these thousands of extra students are trying to get--in the main part of the city, small, one room, cheap.

This particular combination of factors hasn't exactly been helpful for us--we went to see an apartment last week (three weeks after the semester started!) and there had already been 30 people to see it.  Oh, and we called the owner exactly one hour after it was posted online.    Also, the bathroom was such a skinny, tiny room that the toilet had to be turned sideways and you had to step over it to get to the shower.  25 people had already applied for it by the time we made it to our showing.

Of course, that sort of interest is only for the apartments that don't have a real estate fee--which is understandable since these fees generally are around 1000 euro.

But even the apartments with the real estate fee (which, to give you an idea, are around 95-99% of all the ones we've found listed) have a lot of competition too.  Of the 30 apartments (THIRTY) that Paul has seen these past two months, all of them have had at least seven other people apply for them.

Of all the times that Paul has applied to those thirty apartments, he has only gotten a response once, and that was the tragedy that was Peptohaus (or, should I say, NepoHaus?!).

****************************

But, even with the same odds on Aquahaus, we were chosen!!!!   Woo!  I have no idea why or how or who paid who what, but we were the number one applicants this one, golden, miraculous time!

And so we're gearing up to have a life that's a bit poorer, but also quite a bit richer.

Poorer because...
Aquahaus is one of those real estate fee apartments, unfortunately.  But, truly, we had kind of resigned ourselves to it a couple weeks ago.  What this means is that today, we're going to go sign a contract, pay the real estate agency 1000 euro, and pay the landlord a deposit of 850 euro (ouch).   That's before we start even paying rent!

The sort of nice thing about Germany is that your deposit goes into a high-yield savings account and you get it all back with interest when you vacate.  The sort of not nice thing is that we're kissing that 1000 euro fee goodbye--never to be seen again--and that's a lot of money for us right now.  Especially since we still need to buy things like, oh, a bed?  And ohhhh, a spoon to eat with?  Maybe two spoons if we get extravagant. And oh, like, a refrigerator?

Also, Aquahaus is a little bit more expensive than we were hoping to have to pay here--not because we can't afford it, but more because we were prepared to live in a closet so we could save money to travel to exotic locales.  I was hoping to find a place that would cost around 450 euro "warm rent" (that's including water/heat/garbage, but not electricity).   We found a few of those, but again, there were always 30 people interested as well.   Aquahaus is going to be around 570 euro "warm rent" (420 euro "cold rent") but hopefully we can get a bit of a refund at the end of the year if we go easy on our water and heat.  At any rate, it was about 50 euro more each month than our hoped-for upper range.  **Shout out to the ex-pats:  How much are you paying for rent or for electricity?**

What pushed us to taking Aquahaus (other than the fact that it was an actual OFFER) was the fact that the kitchen (minus fridge) came with the apartment so we wouldn't have to buy a stove/oven, sink, and cabinets on top of all our furniture and household necessities (yes, that's a common thing--needing to buy a kitchen).  Also, it's a rather large kitchen comparative to the others we've seen, so we'll have space to bake and cook--which is sort of a hobby and cost-cutter for us.

Blah blah blah budgeting stuff blah blah.  I'm totally into talking money, but I realize it probably gets boring to most people.  I should pace myself.

What I'm REALLY saying is that Aquahaus is going to cost us more than what some other apartments would cost us (if we could ever even have a chance to get one).

BUT

We're going to be RICHER in so many other things:

Like in the fact that we'll be living in the oldest part of the city
(This is our immediate neighborhood).  And it's a quiet part of town, unlike
the cheaper, though more crowded, closer to work student district.

We'll live within the remnants of the
original medieval wall--and see it every day

The largest outdoor market is a five minute walk away--along
with the Marienkirche (St. Mary's Church) and all her
beautiful organ concerts.

And this will be our commute--down the historic
street of the Kroppeliner Gate (one of the original city gates)

Instead of walking 30 minutes to "experience" this beautiful part of the city, it will be our home for the next two years.  I think that's worth a fee and 50 extra euro a month, don't you?