To move, or not to move.

Our landlords are not cool. Basically, they've said they're going to fix a bunch of stuff around here, but never have actually done it. They also prohibit tenants from doing repairs, which we totally disregard because for one, Thak is way handier than their maintenance people, and for another, I think a year's long enough to wait for any given repair to be completed before doing it yourself.

In addition to their ridiculous policies, they also pulled a total bitch move yesterday. As you may imagine, Thak and I pay our bills on time. Our rent is paid on the 1st, no question. Knowing this, imagine my shock when I came home from grocery shopping yesterday, and found an eviction notice on our door. I immediately called Thak at work and asked him if he paid the rent, and of course, he said he did. He checked the bank account, and it had never come out, but he DID pay it. He has the check duplicate and all that. It wouldn't have gotten lost in the mail because we drop it off ourselves, and I KNOW he dropped it off. So anyhow, Thak told his Company Commander about this, and he thought they might have lost the check. I thought that was a good possibility, and yes, it seems that's what happened. So basically, we had to stop payment on that one check, then pay the enormous late fees they insisted upon charging us, and all this within one day. They dropped the notice off sometime after 4 pm yesterday, and said we had to pay in full by today, or leave. OK... Well, the money's not an issue, but wow. THEY lost our check, and so we have to go to the bank, get a cashier's check, and pay enormous late fees because apparently it's OUR fault that THEY lost our check?? Yeah, that didn't go over well.

Honestly, if this house weren't better than 90% of the houses in this city, we would already have moved. It's in a horrid school district, most of our neighbors are 10 million years old, and the house itself is falling apart. It's got the best layout ever, though, and for the price, it's a steal. I would miss the house itself if we moved. I would not miss our craptastic landlords.

After Thak got back this morning from dealing with all that garbage, he went onto AHRN.com, the military-run rental listing site, and was looking at other places. We're trying to figure out if it makes sense to move at this point, or to just suck it up with Slum Lord Supreme until we can get the hell out of here. We paid A TON in deposits on this house (think a full month's rent, plus $600 for pets), and would not lose them automatically if we moved since we've been here over a year, and our lease is month to month at this point anyhow. Even so, signing another year's lease would be stupid at this point because there is a chance we could be out of here long before that (Don't ask how. I'll tell you if it becomes a reality, but at this point, we're not discussing those details with anybody.) Plus, paying a bunch more deposits (although nobody charges as much in pet deposits as our landlord does!) just to avoid another year of what we've already put up with for over a year, is kind of counterproductive when you consider that now is the time to save, not to incur unnecessary expenses like moving. If we moved, it would have to be a killer deal, and compensate in 6 months or less for the money we'd lose from the deposits we paid with our current place. The problem is that it would be the size of your average tuna can, with the worst layout ever, probably in an even crappier neighborhood, and we'd probably have to downgrade to only having one bathroom again, which would totally suck.

At the same time, though, there is a chance we could find a nice place in an outlying community like Socorro, Horizon City, or Clint. The schools in those places aren't good, but they aren't good anywhere here, so we can't really consider that as part of our decision. The houses in those places are fairly cheap. You can get a 4 BR for what you'd pay for a 3 BR in the city, which means that we could get a 3 BR for the low end of what a 3 BR in the city cost last year, which would be much less than what we're paying now. The only issue is the commute. It's really far from post, so we wouldn't have Thak home for lunch, or after PT formation anymore. He'd have to pack lunch and breakfast to take to work. That's not all bad. With him riding the bike more, we're not really concerned about the commute budget-wise because it's not going to cost us much in gas any way you cut it. In the truck, it would cost at least $500 a month in gas to commute to the city everyday, but on the bike, it will cost a teeny tiny fraction of that, so basically the bike has freed up a whole lot more options for us that didn't exist when we first moved out here.

So I think within the next couple weeks, we'll be making our final decision on whether to stay here and suck it up for another year, or to leave the city and suck it up with a long commute. I'm not sure what it'll be at this point. We'll probably end up staying where we are. Thak's just pissed at the situation right now, and when he gets that way, he always says we're going to move. We almost never do, though.