Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

I don’t think I’ve written here about the troubles my building has been having. Well, not so much the building itself but the building owner.

I love our original landlady. She gave us a furnished apartment without much to-do; she made it easy for us to move from a smaller place to a bigger one in the same building. She offered us a special deal in which we paid several months of rent at once for one month free and a year’s worth of free cable, internet, utilities, and twice a month maid service. She’s smart and fun to talk to.

I won’t go into her specific troubles too much, but let’s just say that now we have a new owner. During the various changeovers, I was often given the impression that anyone taking our previous landlady’s place was not to be trusted. I kept hearing different things from different people, and didn’t know what to believe. So I was wary with these new owners.

However, so far they have been awesome. They’ve been very open and helpful, and right now they’re doing some much-needed renovations to the building. My previous landlady also had big dreams for the building, but they were sort of ass backwards. Like, how about repainting the crummy exterior first before getting new fancy furnishings for the apartments.

One of the great things about our place is that we had a hideaway bed in the living room. I say “had” because when our previous landlady was still our landlady, she asked if she could give our bed to a neighbor who was having guests soon.

“I have a brand new mattress coming soon,” she told us. “And I’ll give that to you.”

Sure, why not.

Weeks passed, then months. We weren’t having any guests so we didn’t care too much about the new mattress, but every time she saw us she said, “Oh yes! It’s downstairs. I just need to have it brought up.”

Well, finally, we’re having a guest. (My brother, by the way, who will be performing in Mortified. Go see him!) I doubted the new mattress was still around, but I thought it didn’t hurt to ask. Turns out there was never a new mattress.

“Just old ones,” the super told me. “And we’re getting rid of those. Unless you want one.”

No thanks. Air mattress to the rescue!

And just this morning I was handed a check for two years’ of interest on our security deposit. I completely forgot that we were supposed to get this.

Another thing I found out: to entice us to pay rent ahead of time, our previous landlady had told us that electricity, gas, heat, and garbage would cost about $300 a month. Well, I just switched electricity and gas over to our name, and they say it will cost only about $35 to $40 a month, and the new owners will continue paying for heat and garbage collection. So I guess that’s not really a lie, but I guess owners paying for the other stuff is not unusual.

Our lease expires at the end of the year, and I’m hoping our new lease will be okay. I really don’t want to move.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 9:40 am and is filed under san francisco. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.