Traffic pro

The owners of the house we are trying to rent were supposed to call James Sunday so they could all meet at the house and talk more. We waited all day and did not get a call. I am not good at sitting still. I looked on the Craig's List web site, which is where we found the ad, to see if it was still on there. It was not.

Once it hit 3:30pm James called them and left a voice mail letting them know that if they still wanted to meet that day he was going to be only in town until around 5pm. He went shopping after work to get Noelle some stuff for her birthday so he could kill some time because he was worried that they would call after he already left. They never called so he decided to drive by the house as he headed home. I thought maybe they might have gone over to the house and lost track of time or forgot to bring his number with them since they had it on an email.

When James drove by he said that the house was completely dark and the "for rent" sign in the front was gone. So we still hoped that we got the house and they just had not called back yet. James got probably 30 more minutes of driving done when the man called him. The man said that they still had not gotten the keys from the woman so they had not been able to see the house yet. He said the woman told them that she had everything out of the house but she had put some things in the garage until she could get to them. He then told her that she could not keep things in the garage and had to have them out by today. So he said that he would be getting the keys this morning.

Anyway, the man said that he has only had 4 tenants and one of them was his son that usually did not pay rent. He said that he would rather have an established family in there rather than a partying single man or a young couple that could split up or have kids that they were not ready for. So he told James that we could have the house!

He asked James when we wanted to move and James told him as soon as possible. James said that he was willing to do any work that needs to be done if it means that we could move in right away. So the man said that he would work on the house the next two days since James is going to be here any way and then Wednesday he will bring the lease over to James' work since he will be driving home from work that way. I am soooo excited but I am still worried a little. I would rather the lease be signed already. I will not feel comfortable until it is.

Well, James is back from the store (he has to have frozen pizza for breakfast on his days off) so I better get some coffee made so I can start packing.

Now that Christmas is over we are back to being super busy getting ready for the move. I have been spending hours a day going through websites looking at ads for a house to rent. James has only looked at 3 houses so far. A lot of the places are already rented. Most of the houses are with property management companies. James applied at two of the places but he has not heard anything back from them. I do not know if they take a long time or if they have a lot of people applying.

Well anyway, the very first house James called had told him that they actually do not have the house available yet. The tenants had not been paying rent and she said that she gave them an eviction notice but she has not been able to get a hold of them. She said that she had hoped they would be out of the house last weekend. James called again Monday and was told she was unable to find them but she saw that they still were living there so he should try calling her again Thursday. So yesterday being Thursday James asked me to call her. The woman told me that she finally got hold of the woman and was told that they are in the process of moving out and should be all out this weekend. She also said that she would show the house to anyone that wants to see it before she leaves if she needs to.

The owner of the home then pointed out that the house is older and small. She also made a point to say that she has not seen the house inside lately so she is unsure if there has been any damage from the people that are moving but that she will make sure it is all fixed up. So James tried to call the woman's cell number and it is disconnected. He did drive by the house and said that it does not look that bad. He said it is probably 50 years old but it looks in good shape and it does not look as small as she made it sound. The yard is great. He said that the yard is very big and there is a big field behind it. There is only a house to one side of it but it is not very close and that the back yard has trees all around so you can not even really see the neighbors.

There is also a fenced in dog area in the back. The place is a lot lower price than any of the other ads so James really wants it. The less we pay in rent the more we can put back into our savings.
James is going nuts and wants me to call the woman today and ask her if we can give her the down payment in cash right away to hold it even though we have not seen the inside. The woman is not taking any names or numbers from people since she has not been able to show the house yet. She just keeps telling people to call her back in a few days to check if it can be shown yet. I know she has talked to at least one other family because she asked if I was with Michael because she had talked to a Michael that told her he was coming in from out of town too. So James is freaking out that someone else will get to the house before us.

He asked me to call her today and see if she would take cash to hold it. I told him that seeing as I had just talked to her it would not look right if I called her and asked her that. She told me to call her back if the woman let us see it or after the weekend so she could show it to us. I told James that if he wanted to call he could call her. I do not see her agreeing to it though. She would still be unsure if the people would actually leave when they said they would. Plus she sounded like she really wanted us to see the place first.

James once again has his hopes up on this house and it worries me. This house is why we do not have anywhere to go yet. Each time he talks to the woman he tells me to stop looking at ads and trying to make appointments for him to see houses. Then she tells him to call in a week because the people are still not out and we go back to looking at ads. Madison is supposed to get 3 to 5 inches of snow today so it worries me that these people will not actually move out. I guess we will wait and see.

In the meantime we have only gotten 3 boxes a day packed for the last two days since I have been going through house ads. So we really need to get our butts in gear today. Plus we are also supposed to get that 3 to 5 inches of snow so we will be shoveling too. Now we have two adult shovels and a child's shovel so it should go faster. Dogs are waking up so I better start my day.

Update...


Well it did not turn out as well as I had hoped but I guess in the long run it is for the best. I really wanted them to hand over a check for James right away so he could start looking for a house. We are not ready to move yet and James loves buying things for the kids so he would probably end of spending part of it on the kids before we found a house.


When he got there he found out that they have already began to split Madison into its own region away from Chicago. They had also just brought in a regional manager yesterday to head up the new region. He was told that right now they have to get everything taken care of with the new regional guy and then they could take care of everything with James.


They said that they do really want him and will do just about anything for him but it has to wait a bit. They have a corporate account with a hotel there so they want him to start right away tomorrow. He will leave tomorrow morning and then we will not see him until Saturday night. They are going to try to make sure he gets two days off in a row so that he can sleep at home three nights a week.


As of right now they said that this could go on a couple of weeks until they can get everything settled and can get him the money for the move. We had talked about this being a possibility when this all began but we really hoped that it would not happen. The girls are upset about him being gone but we have done this many times before. I am more worried about what will happen with the neighbors without him being here.


Well the girls are playing a board game with James so I better get back to making dinner.



Oops James already finished it. I better get going.