Welcome again to What I Lease, our weekly sequence (out each Tuesday) that explores the fact of renting – the great, the unhealthy, and the teeny-tiny.
This time round we’re in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, to hang around with Stefanie (@couchstef on Instagram and TikTok), who works for a digital tour tech firm.
Stefanie and her fiancé, who works at an area brewery as a graphic designer, lease a one-bedroom condo – together with the 2 one-year-old cats they adopted in quarantine, Adeline and Rue.
The couple have lived within the condo for six years with none improve to their lease, and really feel tremendous fortunate – regardless of restricted area.
As Stefanie, 29, works remotely, she wants her house to really feel comfy and galvanizing. She’s managed to attain simply that with loads of landlord-approved DIY.
We chatted together with her about what she rents.
We pay $975 per thirty days in lease.
We pay electrical, fuel and web and break up water with our upstairs neighbors (we stay in a transformed duplex). All our payments value about $150 per thirty days.
Our condo is one bed room and one rest room and we even have a sunroom and a yard. Our rest room is just 5ft by 7.25ft!
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We stay on the primary flooring of a transformed historic house (duplex) and we now have upstairs neighbors that stay on the second and third flooring.
We have now a tremendous deal. We moved into our condo six years in the past and our landlord has by no means raised our lease.
We discovered it on Craigslist.
My house is positioned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a subsection of town known as East Falls.
It's a neighborhood about 10 minutes from heart metropolis that's positioned on the river the place individuals get pleasure from biking operating and being lively. There are tons of small/household owned companies which have something you would want inside strolling distance from my house. The prepare is a five-minute stroll and may take you on to town for just some dollars. There are parks and mountaineering close by that let you escape town.
It appears like the proper mixture of city comfort and inexperienced area.
We have now been adorning and adjusting and making upgrades to our condo for the reason that day we moved in.
We persistently are reevaluating our house to perform in addition to attainable. This is essential in a small area to maintain issues tidy and uncluttered.
I wish to give attention to bringing shade and persona into my house by combining secondhand finds with comfy and comfortable items for performance.
We make the most of a variety of wall area, particularly with our 9.5ft ceilings, to take advantage of out of each bit for storage since we solely have one closet in our complete condo.
We're very fortunate to have a landlord that could be very open to us adorning our area as we want.
He has funded a number of improve initiatives, like a $400 rest room refinishing mission, painted counter tops and backsplash set up, a customized closet improve and a full yard makeover with an upgraded fence for lower than $1,000.
Our landlord is open to virtually all of our DIY initiatives and concepts and often pays for all supplies in addition to comps our lease to pay us for the labor we offer since we now have carried out all of the initiatives as DIY.
For probably the most half, we really feel like we now have sufficient area, however we do wish to entertain and that may be a actual problem in a one bed room unit that's lower than 600sqft.
We are able to’t host dinner events with all our buddies seated or comfortably host in a single day company however we're positively comfy right here regularly when it's simply the 2 of us and our two cats.
The worth of this area and what we’ve made it's way more particular to us than having a giant house for entertaining. We stay strolling distance to a number of buddies within the neighborhood and love dwelling right here.
This condo was customized renovated within the Nineteen Eighties by my landlord so it positively has its quirks.
The toilet partitions have been by accident constructed contained in the boundary traces of the room specs as an alternative of out of doors, which made all of the drawers on the precise facet of the self-importance unable to open all the way in which as a result of they hit the bathroom. And the door to the toilet is just 2 inches from the bathroom.
We solely have one normal sized closet in our complete condo! So we’ve had so as to add a number of storage options optimizing the wall area we now have as an alternative.
It may possibly additionally typically be troublesome to stay with upstairs neighbors as you'll be able to hear what feels like bowling and faucet dancing on some nights. However general not one of the quirks of our condo are sufficient to hassle us to maneuver. We actually love our place and are so comfy right here.
We don't, as we really feel we’ve hit the jackpot with our unit/worth/outside area and our supportive landlord who's now a pal.
We most positively need to personal sometime however sadly given the housing market, that’s not attainable for us proper now.
We're completely satisfied to lease for now and have goals of shopping for sometime however are centered on saving for our wedding ceremony first.
What I Lease is a weekly sequence that’s out each Tuesday at 10am.
Examine again subsequent week to have one other nostril round a rented property.
The best way to become involved in What I Lease
What I Lease is Metro.co.uk’s weekly sequence that takes you contained in the locations persons are renting, to offer us all a greater sense of what’s regular and the way a lot we needs to be paying.
When you fancy participating, please e-mail whatirent@metro.co.uk. You’ll have to take footage of your kitchen, front room, rest room, and bed room, plus a couple of photographs of you in your bed room or dwelling space.
Be sure to get permission out of your housemates! You’ll additionally must be okay with sharing how a lot you’re paying for lease, as that’s fairly essential.
We're not simply after the prettiest locations on the market, by the way in which. We would like the fact of renting, so should you're at the moment renting a spot you hate, we might like to see that too (and sympathise drastically!).
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