House Hunting Tips

So you’re looking for a house; make sure you wear the proper bright orange hunting outfit so you don’t get mistaken for a house and shot and killed. Ha ha! No seriously, while house hunting is hard work, it probably won’t kill you. Here’s a few tips to help you out.

Chill Out
Calm down. There are plenty of houses out there, some of them even have roofs and indoor toilets. Every year there is an unnecessarily early rush on the housing. This is caused by anxious students going out into the ghetto with the mentality that there will only be three houses available this year. Please stop. You’re hurting the ghetto. One of the reasons that landlords are able to rent increasingly decrepit and roofless houses is that students continue to jump at the chance to rent them. In fact, have you ever thought about what it would be like if people treated other things like they do the Montreal/Ghetto housing market?

I present to you Orange Hunting with Omar and Jason:

Omar: Boy, these oranges sure are expensive.

Jason: Yeah $50 for a single piece of fruit picked four weeks ago in Mexico seems a bit high. What can you do, though?

Omar: And they’re in pretty bad shape, too. This one has a nest of baby spiders in it.

Jason: Still, we’d better buy these oranges before somebody else does.

Omar: I don’t know…There are more oranges than people who want to buy them. Are you sure we have to buy crappy oranges?

Jason: Definitely.

Omar: What about those oranges two aisles over?

Jason: No way. We want the closest possible oranges.

Omar: But they look nicer, and they’re about half as expensive.

Jason: No dice.

Omar: Okay, fine. Do we have to buy oranges right this minute? I bet if we’re patient, some oranges will hit the market that are nice, close, and not ridiculously expensive.

Jason: Sorry. We need oranges RIGHT NOW.

Okay, does the above dialogue sound stupid to you? Good. I hope you caught the subtle parallels.

Choosing a House
Picking a house is a lot like picking your nose. Be sure to wash your hands immediately afterwards, and don’t do it so much that you start to bleed. Now, you’ll probably see a house with a big living room and think “wow, we can have big parties in here and stock the bar.” Let me be the one to tell you that you will never do this. Instead, find a house that is great for sitting around and watching Glee with the few housemates that you are still on speaking terms with.

One vital thing to check when taking a tour of the house is the shower. You want to make sure that you’ve got good pressure. Remember, when you’re living in a house you’ll have to shower practically every day. No jokes here folks this is serious. Do this or you’ll smell.

Choosing Housemates
Do you really want to live with those assholes? Just relax, you’ll find good housemates. Finding the perfect housemates is a lot like finding true love, it only happens to good looking people in movies.

Pick stupid housemates that you can easily fleece into paying the gravity bill and the butter tax. There are two types of people you don’t want to live with, party animals and girls. Before you get mad at me I’m saying that living with one girl is fine, but living with multiple girls can get crazy. The crazy is amplified as it passes through the house and then rebounds off the walls. While this can typically save you up to ten percent on heating costs in the winter, it is generally not worth it. As for party animals, they’re fun people… at parties. Not so much during midterms or when you need to keep your walls urine free, which is all the time. (To all the party animals who have trouble finding housemates, I’m really sorry.)

Horsemates
Huh? You’re not running a stable, folks.

In Conclusion
The message here is to be calm, be cool. I’m sure you’ll figure it out, and if you don’t, you’ll only be wasting one year of your life and a lot of your parents’ money. Hey, maybe your landlord will be able to afford a new boat.