I came home tonight to find a notice from my landlord (Prometheus you suck) that they’re hiking up my already overpriced rent (they euphemistically referred to it as “new lease terms”).  The rate hike must be for the added bonus of the rat that I saw running around the grounds a couple of weekends ago or the pleasure of dealing with their usually unresponsive office staff.  Prometheus has been perhaps my least favorite rental company.  Actually, I take that back - Equity was worse, way worse (Hidden Valley was so run down).   And Wilson White wasn’t that great, either - they liked to leave lots of threatening flyers about the trash situation (but Nob Hill has been my favorite apartment thus far).  OK, so they all suck.

Anyway, back to the point of this post.  I was expecting them to raise my rent since they’re known for doing that but it was still shocking to see the new rate in print.  And even though I’ve been counting on moving, in the back of my mind I figured that I always had a place to live if I couldn’t find anything.  Now that option isn’t feasible so the pressure is on to find a place.

As I was looking through the notice tonight, I realized that my lease actually ends September 1st and not August 15th.  I’m not sure where I got August 15th because it turns out I moved in August 19th.  So instead of needing to find a place that will be ready by August 1st, I now need to find a place that will be ready by September 1st, which means that it will be pointless to look for a place in the next few weeks.  Given the rental market in SF right now, nobody is willing to hold a place longer than a week or two.  I am a bit disappointed right now because I was hoping that I’d be able to find a place in the next couple of weeks and finally decide my fate (as opposed to feeling in limbo).  On the plus side, I can take a break from looking at apartments for a few weeks and maybe the rental market will get a little bit less competitive (since summer tends to be when people move/switch jobs/relocate).  And the past few weeks of hunting haven’t been a total loss.  I’m far more familiar with SF neighborhoods than I’ve ever been, way better at navigating my way through the city, and I’m more aware of what I can get in my price range.

So the conclusion of this update is that I don’t have anything new to report.