Small-town living has ruined apartment hunting for me. 

Life before Des Moines was a matter of checking one local renter’s guide and getting to know the coffee shop regulars on Main Street. If it wasn’t for the carpet in the bathroom and the weird, iron-heavy taste coming from the tap water, I could have stayed in that two-bedroom-six-closet mansion forever. But I’m now entering my first foray in the Des Moines market with several gridded pages at the back of my planner devoted entirely to the search for housing, with the pros and cons (but the amenities!!) that come with it. The “House Hunters” narrative voice is burned into my brain.

I have been both comforted and warned about my decision to start apartment seeking in May, because it is both the best and the worst time to start seeking, depending on who is offering you advice. You will either find the best rates and specials of the year, or you will doom yourself to overpaying on units among peak seasonal demand. 

If I wasn’t paying a third of my monthly income in student loans, this would have all been over in a week. But graduates can’t be choosers, or something, and in the meantime I wasn’t prepared to realize how big an issue parking was going to be. Having an out-of-town boyfriend who visits with a truck the size of Montana ranks higher than I thought it would on the unit priorities list; when downtown units advertised an extra $90-115 for a parking spot, I nope’d right out of the neighborhood. Plus, what’s this about extending meter hours right before I moved to town?

I’m whining, but my Milwaukee friends are really feeling the parking/housing crunch. When I visit, usually arriving around midnight, it takes an additional 30 minutes for me to drive aimlessly around a 10-minute radius, waiting for someone to move their car for open street parking. Milwaukee at least recognizes it has a problem, and if you call in and ask for night parking permission before 2 a.m. you can get by without a ticket (if you move your vehicle by 6 a.m.). It works for weekend visitors, but if you have a house apartment crammed with eight people, it’s still far from ideal. If you’re a resident with no parking and an impending snowstorm, there are no good choices.

Anyway, forward open studio/1BRs to katehayden@bpcdm.com, or just send me condolences for the loss of my old gem of a habitat. If someone in the startup community could get started on the next Tinder-but-for-roommates, that’d be helpful too.