The Lease is Signed

Introduction

This journal entry was written by me, Brandon Nolet. My partner and I have finally signed the lease to an apartment and things are officially official.

Paranoia

Leading up to signing the lease, I was worried with practically every good visit. I was afraid that there would be some glaring issue that wasn’t initially noticed. I was afraid for some sort of bug infestation. What I was most afraid of leading up to signing this lease, though, was fraud.

This place is a nice fit for us and fits within our budget, but we know from looking at many different places that this apartment should be at least $1500/month for rent. We’ll be paying $500 less than that.

Couple that with asking for the first month’s rent in cash, and asking for our social insurance numbers, I got a little paranoid. I started to think it was going to be a scam. But seeing how consistent the property agent was, how professional everything was done, and how thorough everything was, I could tell that it certainly wasn’t a scam.

They did a credit check, pulled up whatever records they could find on us, and accepted us as the prospective tenant. I worried for nothing, it seems, but I think it’s better to err on the side of caution than to be purely optimistic. I know that one could easily say that a criminal who’s good at what they do would be able to do all this convincingly but the chances of that are highly unlikely, so for now I’m satisfied.

Expenses

Now that the lease is signed, we have to think about the expenses involved in moving and in setting up a new apartment. Between the moving truck rental, purchasing a new appliance, and forwarding our mail, it’ll probably cost us around $1000 all told and that’s on top of paying our first month’s rent.

Put on top of that the cost of utilities, public transport, and insurance. The expenses really start to add up. I know that my partner and I make enough to support this “lifestyle” but I worry that if something were to go horribly wrong that we might be looking at incurring some sort of debt. We’ll be saving a lot of money, however, by making this move so hopefully that will have enough cushion to keep us “afloat”.

I’m not super nervous, but it is something that will stay on my mind for a while.

Conclusion

While I’m really excited about the move and I think that most things will turn out just fine, there will always be that little worry in the back of my head. I worry that this might be too good to be true, but only time will tell.