On this day three months from now, my co-op in LA will be over and I'll be hitting the road back to Cincinnati. I figure it's never too early to put this out there, but I'll be looking for a place to live beginning mid-December, and no later than January 1st. If you know of a clean, quiet one-bedroom that's available around that time in Clifton Gaslight, Northside, Fort Thomas, Mount Lookout, or anywhere in between, let me know. I'm hoping to keep my total expenses (rent + utilities) under $700/mo. (I'm also holding out some hope that I might be able to get my old 2-bedroom apartment in OTR back, or something similar to it. If that happens, I'll be looking for a roommate.)

 

Thanks in advance.

I have a 2 bedroom on 12th & Walnut. Our roommate happens to be going back to NYC in December. let me know if you want more details.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm not really interested in another share situation unless it's my apartment.

 

I have enough furniture in storage to fill a 2-bedroom apartment, so I need something where I'll be the only one the lease. If I do the roommate thing again, I want to be the one subletting the spare bedroom to somebody else. I'm not really interested in living out of a suitcase in somebody else's apartment, which is what I've been doing here in LA for the past six months.

I certainly understand. Best of luck!

Bumping this thread, and adding that I'm hoping to bump my move date up to the end of November in order to avoid paying December rent in Los Angeles and living out of a suitcase in a hotel over the holidays. In that case, I'll be looking for something that's available December 1st or shortly afterwards.

Just tweeted by JYP:

 

https://urbansitespm.appfolio.com/listings/listings/1f177420-9142-4574-a5df-06a624712a36

 

 

Saw that. Unfortunately, I fear that OTR and downtown will be beyond my price range until I'm done with grad school and have a permanent, full-time job. Until then, I need to keep my total housing costs (rent + utilities + cable/internet) under $700 a month.

 

In other news, it's official: I'm moving back to Cincinnati at the end of November. My last day of work will be Friday, November 30, and I plan to hit the road that evening. Assuming no delays on the road, I should be rolling into Cincinnati the evening of Monday, December 3rd.

 

And quite honestly, I hope this is the last long-distance move I ever make.

Welcome back to Cincinnati. I'll let you know if I find anything that suits your situation.

 

Have you considered looking for a unit through OTRCH? I know several UC students/recent grads who live in OTRCH units. They have drywall instead of brick and sometimes laminate in place of hardwood, but monthly rent is less than half your requested $700...with views of Washington Park to boot.

 

http://www.otrch.org/residents/apply.html

with views of Washington Park to boot.

 

I thought most of OTRCH's members are STILL protesting the Washington Park renovations.  A bit of an irony that you're making being close to the park a selling point for potential renters.

Have you checked out craigslist? It is a great resource with tons of options w/photos and you can search specific areas within cincinnati.

Yes, I've been checking craigslist daily.

I figured. But thought I would throw it out there.

Is anybody familiar with McAlpin Apartments near CSU? Sounds like they're under new management and have been doing renovations, and they're in a good location for me (on the 17 bus, and close to DAAP and Northside), but my big concern with anything near campus is ending up in a student ghetto filled with rowdy undergrads. It's one of the big reasons I'm looking at Mt. Lookout and Ft. Thomas, which are less convenient, but a lot quieter.

 

I'm holding out a sliver of hope that I might be able to get my old place on Liberty Street back, or maybe the apartment downstairs from it which is nearly identical. I'm not holding my breath, though. In retrospect, I should've just found a subtenant.

 

On a related note: It bugs the hell out of me when a prospective landlord doesn't return a phone call or email. If you can't bother to return the call of somebody who wants to be your tenant, how am I supposed to believe you'll respond promptly to maintenance requests or other issues after I've signed a lease?

the latest Northside eNewsletter, Bits & Pieces, has 5 apartments listed & a couple shares. 1 share wants help in the garden.......

http://www.northside.net/#BnP

Is anybody familiar with McAlpin Apartments near CSU? Sounds like they're under new management and have been doing renovations, and they're in a good location for me (on the 17 bus, and close to DAAP and Northside), but my big concern with anything near campus is ending up in a student ghetto filled with rowdy undergrads. It's one of the big reasons I'm looking at Mt. Lookout and Ft. Thomas, which are less convenient, but a lot quieter.

 

I'm holding out a sliver of hope that I might be able to get my old place on Liberty Street back, or maybe the apartment downstairs from it which is nearly identical. I'm not holding my breath, though. In retrospect, I should've just found a subtenant.

 

On a related note: It bugs the hell out of me when a prospective landlord doesn't return a phone call or email. If you can't bother to return the call of somebody who wants to be your tenant, how am I supposed to believe you'll respond promptly to maintenance requests or other issues after I've signed a lease?

 

Knew many students who lived at that complex back in the late 80's. It was quiet then, but that was a long time ago. FWIW I lived in and then owned

a few duplexes in and around Riddle, Probasco (went to DAAP in the late 80's) very close to DAAP. Never had problems with noise, rowdy udergrads

and or bad tenants. Gaslight, up the hill, from McAlpin is always worthy of a look. Most of the udergrad ghetto stuff was usually reserved for

the area South of McMillan.

Just got off the phone with a leasing agent at McAlpin. The price is right, but the apartments don't have dishwashers, and HVAC is apparently handled via some sort of central boiler system that doesn't give tenants much in the way of individual control over the temperature inside the apartment. I can see that being problematic for me, so I'll likely pass.

 

However, I have a solid lead on a place in Fort Thomas that sounds promising. Not quite as convenient as living in Cincy, but it's on a TANK bus route, has a dishwasher and central air, and is in a complex with a reputation for being quiet and well-managed. (My family actually lived in this apartment complex for a couple years when I was a toddler.) Just waiting on some digital photos of the unit from the landlord, but this is probably my strongest lead so far.

A $%#@! dishwasher?

I thought you didn't want to share. Maybe the person in Northside who wants someone to do composting will swap for dishwashing?

Good lord man, just buy some daggone rubber gloves!

I guess no matter where I choose to live, there will always be somebody there to scold me for making the incorrect choice. Unless you're offering to come over and do my dishes for me, then I don't think you're in a position to criticise my dishwashing preferences.

Die if you want

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dishwashers-recalled-due-fire-hazard-141046185.html

Don't send your ghost running to me for salvation after your mortal butt goes up with the dishes.......

I hardly think a dishwasher and central air are outrageous requests. Not everyone wants the Northside grunge lifestyle, Quimbob.

Kunstler would be losing his mind right now.

I hardly think a dishwasher and central air are outrageous requests. Not everyone wants the Northside grunge lifestyle, Quimbob.

I have no dog in this show, but I agree.  I do not want to live without my modern conveniences!

LOL, so only grungy Northsiders do their dishes by hand?

wow, well you guys torch yourselves in your sleep & incinerate your neighborhoods so you can have some (short) privileged 21st century lifestyle.

I choose life.

I hardly think a dishwasher and central air are outrageous requests. Not everyone wants the Northside grunge lifestyle, Quimbob.

I have no dog in this show, but I agree.  I do not want to live without my modern conveniences!

 

We already knew you were a princess. This adds no new information to the discussion.

I have no dishwasher in my otherwise great apartment and it is absolutely terrible.  I’m just lucky to have a girlfriend who can’t cook, so she automatically gets stuck with dish duty. 

 

Also, I have an architect friend that just renovated his house in Northside and is renting the brand new apartment.  I think it is closer to $700 a month, though, but that includes heat. 

 

If you could pass along any information you have about the place in Northside, I'd appreciate it.

My Northside house (that we own) doesn't have a real dishwasher because the kitchen's currently too small, but we have a portable dishwasher instead that rolls over to the sink, and dubles as extra counterspace when it's not in use.  You can get one for a few hundred bucks.

I am left wondering how LiG lived in NYC for so long with his dishwasher demands. The only people I know in NYC with dishwashers are very wealthy.

 

I never had one living in Europe. It was inconvenient, but only slightly (much more intolerable were the standards my European friends had for cleanliness when they hand-washed dishes). I can't imagine it ever being a dealbreaker on an awesome apartment.

My old neighbors had a portable like Northsider is talking about & it backed up & flooded the kitchen routinely.

UrbanSites will have some new units coming online soon - perhaps Nov - so watch that closely

I am left wondering how LiG lived in NYC for so long with his dishwasher demands. The only people I know in NYC with dishwashers are very wealthy.

 

I never had one living in Europe. It was inconvenient, but only slightly (much more intolerable were the standards my European friends had for cleanliness when they hand-washed dishes). I can't imagine it ever being a dealbreaker on an awesome apartment.

 

There's no comparison between the rental market in Cincinnati and that of NYC. In NYC, tenants compete for apartments. In Cincinnati, landlords compete for tenants.

 

I made do without a dishwasher in NYC because my options were limited; I was happy just to have my own apartment without a roommate and be near a stop on the express train. In Cincinnati, I can afford to be much more selective.

 

OTR: How current are the listings on the UrbanSites website? It's been my experience that the website doesn't necessarily reflect what's currently available.

OTR: How current are the listings on the UrbanSites website? It's been my experience that the website doesn't necessarily reflect what's currently available.

 

That might be the case. At least with this new wave of units, I know they'll be posted online as they become available mid- to late-November. I'd check it everyday and would even consider calling them.

I am left wondering how LiG lived in NYC for so long with his dishwasher demands. The only people I know in NYC with dishwashers are very wealthy.

 

I never had one living in Europe. It was inconvenient, but only slightly (much more intolerable were the standards my European friends had for cleanliness when they hand-washed dishes). I can't imagine it ever being a dealbreaker on an awesome apartment.

 

There's no comparison between the rental market in Cincinnati and that of NYC. In NYC, tenants compete for apartments. In Cincinnati, landlords compete for tenants.

 

I made do without a dishwasher in NYC because my options were limited; I was happy just to have my own apartment without a roommate and be near a stop on the express train. In Cincinnati, I can afford to be much more selective.

 

I agree. But still, I can't imagine finding an awesome apartment and turning it down because there's no dishwasher.

I never said a dishwasher was a must-have item. But it's a fairly basic appliance that most apartments in my price range now include, and if an apartment doesn't have one, there had better be some other redeeming feature about the apartment that makes it worthwhile. As far as I can tell, the McAlpin Apartments don't have any such redeeming feature. The lack of individual HVAC control is much more of a deal-breaker for me than the lack of a dishwasher, anyway.

 

Now that the dishwasher issue has been thoroughly beaten into the ground, can we please get back on topic and help me find a place to live?

My old neighbors had a portable like Northsider is talking about & it backed up & flooded the kitchen routinely.

 

Oh no!  They must have had a terrible model - ours was a hand-me-down for a friend that at this point is almost a decade old and we've never had problems with it.

 

from Northside's Bits and Pieces newsletter, this place sounds very nice:

 

" 



Spacious 850 s.f. first floor apartment in a four unit apartment building @ $725/mo. The apartment functions as a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment, both rooms are connected. The apartment has hardwood floors, high ceilings, large living and dining rooms, IKEA kitchen with refrigerator, DW, range and microwave, balcony and coin laundry in Basement. Water is included; all other utilities are paid for by tenant. Call 513-910-2202 to schedule a walk-through. Pets okay, though pet deposit is required.

 "

Here's a place I virtually lived in in Mt Auburn.

Semi finished attic, nothing is square, no central AC, used to have a 2 car garage.

It's actually a nice 1895 place. Toilet room is separated from the bathroom with a heater in the wall in between. Nothin' like a warm place to poop.

It's far enough down Highland that the BS at McMillan shouldn't be an issue.

http://www.century21.com/property/2220-highland-ave-cincinnati-oh-45219-CBR19618845

Unfortunately, I'm not really in a position to buy anything, and won't be for a few more years. Otherwise I'd buy something in OTR and fix it up myself.

No money has changed hands and nothing has been signed yet, but it looks like I'll be getting a place in Clifton's Gaslight District, on Senator Place around the corner from Skyline Chili. (No dishwasher, alas, but with the time I save commuting I should be able to find time to wash my dishes by hand.)

Don't even wash 'em. It's European not to.

Wash them, but don't rinse the soap off. Just put them straight in the dish drainer. That is the Euro way as I learned it. I'm sure the continent is not monolithic in its (in)sanitary practices, however.

I'll be going full-on hipster by making my own organic soap from locally sourced raw materials, and using a natural sponge harvested from the ocean floor by Indonesian peasants.

well....

Has the place got room for an Indonesian peasant? A good size storage bin would probably be ok.

It'll need air holes.

Just a quick note to say that after much wailing and gnashing of teeth (mainly due to having my car's transmission crap out in the Inland Empire just as I had hit the road to Cincinnati, which involved a $2650 rebuild and four extra nights in motel rooms), I finally arrived in Cincinnati this past Saturday. It's good to be back home again.

Cars suck!

 

Welcome home. Can't say I'm not a little jelly.

I bet a lot of transmissions crap out in the Inland Empire.

Mine had been showing some symptoms of trouble for a while, but I had my mechanic in Santa Monica look at it twice and he said it looked fine. I was hoping to nurse it along back to Cincinnati and have my mechanic here look at it, but it had other plans. I think 30 miles of stop-and-go rush hour traffic through Los Angeles on a Friday evening, with the car loaded down with all my stuff, didn't help. The long uphill stretch of I-10 just east of Covina is what finally did it in; the Aamco guy in Upland said most of the internal components of the transmission essentially welded themselves together due to extreme overheating. I'm just happy this happened in the LA suburbs and not out in the middle of the desert somewhere. Good news is, they installed a heavy-duty transmission cooler along with the new tranny, so hopefully I'll get a few more years of life from my car, as the engine and body are still in good shape.

 

In retrospect, this whole co-op experience in California was a huge mistake on my part. While it wasn't without its good points, it certainly wasn't worth the enormous financial and personal sacrifices I made for it. I should've just done this co-op with a local firm in Cincinnati, kept my apartment in OTR, and used part of the money I would've saved to take a nice two-week vacation to the Pacific Northwest. Oh well, live and learn...

You must have learned something about how much you would or would not desire a career move to LA. That's part of the magic of the co-op: a low-commitment way to test out a possible career move.

LA was never my first choice for this co-op; I was hoping to end up in Seattle or Portland. When it became clear that wasn't going to happen, I should have just stayed local instead of accepting a low-paying position in LA and giving up the life I had worked so hard to build here in Cincinnati. (And the co-op wasn't supposed to last for eight months, but a scheduling screw-up thanks to UC's semester conversion left me stranded out there for an additional semester. If I had been working for a local firm, that extra semester would've just meant more money in the bank, instead of using it all to pay for moving expenses.)

 

I met some great people and the work experience will look good in my portfolio, and I hope someday I can look back on all the sacrifices I made to make it happen, but for now I'm just not seeing it.

Well, welcome back!