tl;dr: Way to stay in a Boston area frugally until a good apartment comes available?
Probably moving to Boston (South Boston or commutable-to) next month on a very last-minute opportunity. My spouse has to start work there and can't miss any time. (I have a remote part-time job, so I just need internet from anywhere) But there's a problem:
- it's mid July, so many rentals are for Sep 1st now.
- it strikes me as a tough rental market: extremely high prices (seeing 1BRs for $2,500 and up, way up), some (many?) landlords use realtors that take one month's rent for a fee, etc.
- I'm extremely picky (insane) about neighbor noise and of course I want it to be safe and halfway decent, so I don't want to pick just the first thing we see. (Knowing that, ultimately, it's all a crap shoot. I just want to try to avoid obvious sources of likely neighbor noise if I at all can).
- We live about 5-6 hours away by highway, and have a reliable car.
We're going up there this weekend for a different reason and staying with a close friend for a couple of days. He's a mensch and might let us stay further, but I don't want to wear out my welcome at his home (with wife and part-time kids from his first wife). We have one other (not super close) friend up there who could maybe put us up a night or two.
But what if we are able to find a place, either this weekend or in two weeks or something (whenever we go back up), but it's only available Sept 1st? We have to start work in mid August, I think (still finalizing).
How can we "bridge" that time without breaking the bank? We could stay in a cheaper motel, but those are probably at least $60/night + tax, so like $80/night, or the equivalent of $2,400/mo. I get that's probably close to what we might pay for the apartment, but that's for a whole apt, not a small crummy motel room. And $80/night might be unrealistically cheap, I don't know.
Are there other options--even off the beaten path ones--you could recommend? We're a mid40s married couple, no kids, no pets, and we could very conceivably keep our possessions in storage at our family's home in this area and pick much of that up later on another trip. We also are fine with "roughing it" (to some extent) and have no health limitations. Thanks!
July 11, 2017 at 12:49AM
