Sometimes More is Less

Or, why I chose to blow up my hous­ing bud­get and go with a fan­cy con­do as my new residence. 

Look­ing for hous­ing is tough in the best of times and we are far from the best of times right now. Hous­ing prices are at an all-time high and inven­to­ry is at some of the low­est lev­els since they start­ed track­ing them. When I bought the house with my then-part­ner last year, one of the things I was most excit­ed about was lock­ing in a set lev­el for my hous­ing bud­get. (Ignor­ing future prop­er­ty tax increases.)

When I start­ed look­ing for a new place after the breakup, I had this idea that I’d be able to find a nice place for rough­ly the same amount I’d been pay­ing in rent before I bought the house. $1,125 a month seemed rea­son­able for a 2 bed­room, 2 bath­room apart­ment in St. Louis. I was quick­ly brought down to earth. 

When I say there was lit­tle to noth­ing avail­able in that price range, I mean there were one or two units for rent on Craigslist from one of the most noto­ri­ous prop­er­ty man­age­ment com­pa­nies in the St. Louis area. I’d name and shame, but they keep chang­ing their name to stay ahead of their rep­u­ta­tion. I knew I did not want to rent from them. 

So, I upped the high end of my bud­get. Sure­ly there would be some­thing avail­able for $1300–1400. There were a few more units, but most of them required me to make com­pro­mis­es I would­n’t or could­n’t make. No cats, no washer/dryer in the unit, or over the Illi­nois bor­der. On a whim, I elim­i­nat­ed the price lim­it and looked to see what was avail­able no mat­ter the cost. There are some nice units for rent for over $3k a month but those were very clear­ly out of my budget. 

At the end of my time search­ing, I had two valid con­tenders. One was a loft style apart­ment in a build­ing that was orig­i­nal­ly a school. For $1500, I’d get a 2 bed­room, 2 bath­room 1200 sq ft apart­ment. Not bad. The oth­er option was an owned con­do in a build­ing split between hotel rooms and con­dos. For $1750, I’d get a 2 bed­room, 2.5 ba 1500 sq ft unit. Now, is an extra toi­let and 300 sq ft worth an extra $250 a month? Not usually. 

In this case, how­ev­er, it was. 

With the school build­ing loft, I’d have to either fight for lim­it­ed on-street park­ing or pay $100 a month for a reserved spot. All util­i­ties (elec­tric­i­ty, gas, water, sew­er, trash) would’ve been my respon­si­bil­i­ty. With a bare brick wall punc­tu­at­ed by giant win­dows, it could’ve eas­i­ly cost $2–300 a month to heat/cool the unit. The build­ing was a fair bit away from work, so I would’ve elect­ed to dri­ve to work on all but the nicest days. I also would’ve been on the hook for get­ting my own gym mem­ber­ship as the one in the build­ing would not have been good for much (iron­ic, con­sid­er­ing it was a for­mer school build­ing. You’d think it would’ve had a sweet gym setup!).

So much more was includ­ed with­in the rent for the con­do. Since the con­dos share space in the build­ing with the hotel rooms, it would be dif­fi­cult if not down right impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate out all the util­i­ties. So, all util­i­ties are includ­ed in the rent minus elec­tric­i­ty and inter­net. Two park­ing spaces in a secured, well-lit garage are also includ­ed in the rent. Since this space is shared with the hotel, I have access to the hotel ameni­ties which include but are not lim­it­ed to, a pool and a gym. Last, but not least, the con­do is in down­town St. Louis, which means my com­mute is a hop, skip and a jump (when we go back to work­ing in the build­ing again). This also means I don’t need to wor­ry about traf­fic, park­ing, or dri­ving after drink­ing after attend­ing events at Enter­prise Cen­ter or Busch Sta­di­um. Walk­ing to Blues or Car­di­nals games is super easy! 

	2 Cool 4 School ($)	The Suite Life ($)	Over­all Difference
Rent	1500	1750	-250
Util­i­ties	300	50	—
Gym Mem­ber­ship	47	0	+47
Park­ing	100	0	+147
Auto Expens­es	200	50	+297
Total	$2147	$1850	$297

* Num­bers will be updat­ed on util­i­ties after first bill is paid. 

There are some oth­er intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to my new place that can’t be com­pared with a sim­ple table. I’m rent­ing pri­vate­ly from the own­ers of the con­do. They are fab­u­lous peo­ple who want to do things the right way. I’m not sub­ject to the whims of a prop­er­ty man­age­ment com­pa­ny out to squeeze every dol­lar they can out of their ten­ants. All issues from the con­do have been dealt with prompt­ly so far (not that there have been many because it’s a very nice con­do). Since my land­lord is the orig­i­nal own­er of the con­do, she designed the lay­out and picked out all of the mate­ri­als in the unit. She has excel­lent taste, so I get to enjoy stun­ning import­ed African Cher­ry wood floors, gor­geous cher­ry cab­i­nets, gran­ite coun­ter­tops, and the world’s biggest soak­ing tub. I could not afford to rent a stan­dard apart­ment with this lev­el of finishes. 

The first thing she said to me when I looked at the con­do was that I was­n’t just mov­ing into the build­ing — I’d be join­ing a very tight knit com­mu­ni­ty. I’ll talk about this more in an upcom­ing post, but I have been crav­ing a local com­mu­ni­ty here in St. Louis so when she said that, my eyes lit up. So far, all of the neigh­bors have been absolute­ly won­der­ful. They are warm and gen­er­ous peo­ple who have wel­comed me with open arms. One set of neigh­bors invit­ed me over for din­ner my first week here. Anoth­er neigh­bor has all-inclu­sive tick­ets to the St Louis Blues games, so I was able to see a game with her and thor­ough­ly enjoyed myself. Yet anoth­er set of neigh­bors found out I was a big Car­di­nals fan, so I’m invit­ed to go to games with them as they have sea­son tick­ets (if/when we get base­ball in 2022 with the play­er lock­out going on).

Oth­er super nice to haves with the con­do so far include major heat theft from the hotel rooms below me (I have the temp set to 65, the temp stays at 69–71, and I’ve only heard the heat kick in twice in 2 weeks. When the weath­er out­side has been as cold as 0), 15% off hotel rooms for friends and fam­i­ly, super cheap park­ing, a 20% dis­count at the hotel restau­rant and being super close to the tran­sit sta­tion. That will make it easy when I go on trips! No more get­ting some­one to drop me off at the air­port, pay out the nose for park­ing or catch­ing an Uber!

Over­all, despite the high­er ini­tial hit to my month­ly bud­get, mov­ing into the con­do was prob­a­bly the best out­come I could’ve hoped for. Bartholomew and I are def­i­nite­ly enjoy­ing the “Suite Life”!

As always, thanks for read­ing! How close­ly do you eval­u­ate all the details when com­par­ing two poten­tial places? Sound off in the com­ments below!