Housing! A Wacky Plan in four parts

[usernamenumber]

UPDATE Nothing is settled yet, but it is looking like we have enough people for the Belmont place, too many for the Somerville place (plus more interest in Belmont), but not enough for both. Still though, if there's a group of three who would be interested in Somerville, lemme know and I can pass on contact info.

Hokay, so.

Boston types, I've got this wacky idea, which involves any of the local geekery who are looking for housing, or will be in the coming months.

You've probably heard that about our housing situation by now (short version: ZOMGWEHAVETOGTFO!) As such, we've been looking at places. There are not a lot of places available in the middle of the summer. We have, however, found two, which have an interesting set of tradeoffs:

Part One: great house, not-great location:
This morning, Josh and I went to see a place in Belmont. The house is awesome. Four levels if you count the basement rec room, five off-street parking places, screened in patio, five bedrooms with three bathrooms. Not shared with anyone else. It basically cries out "Please, make ma a haven for a group of fun-loving geeks!".

The down-side of this place is the location, at least if you are used to living near the T, let alone a social center like one of the squares. There are a number of busses that go from there to Harvard Square, but that's about it for public transportation. It's probably a 20-30 min bike ride from there to Porter or Harvard. That said, it is right down the street from a grocery store, so the essentials are there.

After returning home I learned about...

Part Two: not-great house, great location:
faerieboots informed me that the household of a mutual friend, laura47 (to whom this may come as a surprise, since I haven't talked to her about it), recently moved out and is still available. The house, from what I've been told, is not bad, but nowhere near as cool as the Belmont place. An ordinary, slightly dingy (though about to be renovated) three-bedroom, one bath place. The location, however, is much better, just a few blocks from Ball Square and closer to Porter and probably Davis than our current place. On top of it all (literally), there's another geekhaus upstairs, which seems to be populated by some pretty cool people already.

Part Three: A brief aside...
I don't know where else to put this, so I'll put it here: There is a possibility that we will need a subletter through the end of July, with the option to lease on for next year, though you'd have to apply for that. Also, big_jewfro is selling his furniture. These include a very nice desk, shelves, etc. As with the sublet, we may already have a taker, but if anyone out there is interested, please let us know.

Part Four: And now, a Wacky Plan
To summarize:

• There is a 5br place with better house than location.
  
• There is a 3br place with better location than house.
  
• Total: 8 rooms split between houses with pro/cons such that different members of my household are leaning different ways.
  
• There are 2-4 of us (depending on Josh and Kevin's situations) currently on the market
  
• I know of at least six other geeks who will be looking come September
  
• It could therefore be possible to distribute the local geekery between both places, thereby maintaining the two-level geekhaus near Ball Sq and establishing Das Uberhaus Ultimate Geek Social Mecca ZOMG in Belmont.
  

So, here's he deal. If you are one of those people who will be looking for housing, and would be interested in doing something like this. Please reply with:

• Whether you would lean toward the Belmont or Somerville house
  
• Whether you would be willing/able to take the one that isn't your preference
  
• If you're comfortable with saying so, what your rent ceiling is
  

Rent at both places, if everyone split evenly, would be $700 each. However, the rooms are all different sizes so I expect that some would pay more and some would pay less based on that.

Oh, if you think you might be one of the people I'm talking about and you are not interested, if you could tell me here or in private that would be helpful.

This would be super-awesome if we can work the logistics right, but we have to make decisions fast here, because at least the place in Belmont will be going soon, so please reply with a quickness.

Thanks!

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

In general, Belmont on-street parking appears to be pretty darned easy. My company overflows our parking lot, and our overflow people never seem to have trouble finding parking (except when there's voting happening at the library across the street).

I don't live in Belmont, but I work there, and I've found it a pretty tolerable and safe place (there's one massive traffic clusterfsk but it's not anywhere near that house). Very walking friendly. F'r instance, I and many other women leave work pretty late at times (midnight-2 am) and never worry overmuch about getting to our cars safely. I see joggers and bikers regularly through our part of Belmont. And Belmont is bizarrely close to many things that it doesn't look close to. I don't know how they manage this particular form of time-space crunching, but it happens.

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

On-street parking in Belmont has one big catch (unless they've changed it recently): parking on-street overnight is illegal. But for evening visits, where I lived it was no problem.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

That wouldn't surprise me -- Arlington's got the same thing.