We have a place to live!

It was a long, strange road, but this week we finally signed a three-month lease on a new place...and we moved in immediately. Here's a look at our new landlord posing with us in the dining area...


His name is Anthony and he's truly a wonderful fellow. But why sign for just three months, you ask? The answer lies in that long, strange road I mentioned. First, some background...

Before we left Ann Arbor, Katherine applied to become the warden of a residence hall at the University of Hong Kong. (Similar to a prison warden, I guess, but with students instead of inmates. ;>) A warden manages most aspects of the dorm (procedures, policies, discipline, admittance, the general atmosphere, etc) and, in return, is given an apartment situated atop the dorm. It's a wonderful way to make a positive impact in students' lives outside of the classroom.

As part of the warden hiring process for this particular residence hall, Katherine participated in three different interviews (with current students living in the dorm, alumni of the dorm, and the wardenship selection committee). They all went very well, so we felt pretty good about her chances.

Unfortunately, though, on February 28th, she was informed that another candidate had been selected for the position. We were disappointed, but quickly picked ourselves up and started looking for a permanent place to live (instead of the more expensive, month-to-month arrangement of the "service apartment" we had been living in). Let's walk through a timeline from that point until now...

March 1st: We found an apartment we wanted. After some difficult negotiating, we came to an agreement with the landlord and planned to sign the lease agreement on March 2nd.

March 2nd: At the last minute, the landlord used a pressure tactic and changed the terms of the agreement (raising our rent by a few hundred US dollars). I suppose he was hoping that we were desperate enough to swallow the pill, but we weren't since we still had a full month left in our current lease. So we walked away.

March 4th: We found another place - one which we liked even better than the first. We made an offer and, without any negotiating, came to an agreement with the landlord (a much nicer process than the first go-round). We setup a 3pm meeting to sign the lease on the following day. (Note that the landlord had to drive about 3 hours from mainland China to be present for the signing.)

March 5th: Only an hour before the lease signing, Katherine was informed that the wardenship selection committee was not quite as certain about their candidate selection as once thought. She was asked to wait on signing a lease for one week to let everything get sorted out. This put us in a strange position. The landlord was already on his way from China, so we couldn't really cancel the meeting. Instead, we went and explained the situation and the landlord was unbelievably understanding and sympathetic - a really wonderful man. The kind of landlord you dream of having, actually. He did not ask us to sign anything and told us to contact him again if the warden's position fell through.

Three weeks passed and we heard nothing from the wardenship selection committee. The lease in our current place only had a week left in it, so we decided to give up on the wardenship and contact the landlord again. The place hadn't been rented yet, amazingly, so we setup another lease-signing meeting for 11AM on March 25th.

March 25th: At 2AM, 8 hours before our signing, Katherine received an e-mail from the head of the wardenship selection committee, telling her that the originally-selected candidate had officially backed-out and that the selection committee would now be recommending that Katherine be extended an offer for the job. Katherine was up late working, so she got the note as it arrived and, of course, she woke me up to deliver the news. We were in shock and had to figure out what to do with the lease signing that was hours away.

We realized, though, that we did indeed need a place to stay for the next three months, since it is likely that we wouldn't be able to move into the warden's apartment until sometime in June. We could renew the contract for our current place, or we could move into this new place. We ran a calculation and, if we offered to pay the entire agent commission (equivalent to one month of rent, usually split between landlord and tenant) as a concession for all the trouble we had put this landlord through, the cost of living here and the cost of living in the new place would be nearly the same for 3 a month period. Moving incurs more effort, and we'd need to buy some extra furniture and various odds and ends, but we decided we would rather go through that in order to keep our promise.

The last piece of the puzzle: Would the landlord be willing to sign only a 3 month lease? This is almost never done. Usually, the minimum is one year. At the meeting, we talked through everything and, in the end, successfully negotiated a 3 month least at the same rent price we had originally agreed upon a month earlier. The lease was signed and we were ready to move in immediately. Whew!

March 28th: Movers came to transfer all of our goodies and we're in! Nothing is setup yet, but we made it. ;> A wild ride, no?