New Apartment

I'm moving! (See http://gogloh.blogspot.com/2010/02/apartments-birds-and-burritos.html for my previous Korean apartment hunting experience.)

After some running around, I finally found a place to stay for the next year or so. Finding a good apartment takes a lot of work, on the most part, no matter where you live. I spent about six hours running around on Monday, as a start.

First, I looked around HBC (Haebongcheon) area, close to Noksapyeong station. It's an area that used to be quite dangerous, but is slowly improving. It's about a 10 minute or more walk from the subway station. There is more space there, since the rent is cheaper, but the buildings are generally older and not very clean. There are also a lot hilly areas, so many places are actually quite dangerous to walk to in the winter. If someone has a good roommate in mind, it's not a terrible place to live, especially on a limited budget. There are a lot of non-Koreans who move into that area, so there is a reputation of people who live there being more comfortable around other English speakers and never exploring other parts of Seoul. The real estate person I talked with was Gilbert from nearsubway.com, and he was very friendly and helpful. However, I didn't like any of the places he showed me, save one that was a bit too far up a narrow alley way on a hill and too expensive for just one person.

Secondly, I looked around my current area. It's somewhat close to HyoChang Park Station, and I love this area. It's very central, but quiet. It's an older neighborhood, so there are a lot of families and less commercial establishments. Plus, the park is lovely. It's got frogs in the summer, birds year round, exercise areas, places for badminton and basketball, and little bathrooms that start playing music when you enter them. The places around here are mostly for students, so are studio apartments on the most part. If you want something more roomy, there are some gems, if you don't mind a few quirky details. For example, I saw a place that was very spacious, had a huge bedroom with build in storage space across one entire wall, a kitchen in the hallway, and then a small hallway from the kitchen that led to a tiny bathroom. The small hallway had a window into the bedroom. The rent was very cheap, and the space was a bit wacky, but also quite nice in a unique way. Other than that, there was one great studio apartment that was beautiful. It was small, but it had a sliding door between the tiny kitchen and the bedroom. The wallpaper was festive (and a little sparkly...). It came with a very nice desk and a flat screen TV. Oh my! I was tempted by the TV, but I'm moving out of a studio apartment now, and couldn't handle being in a cramped space for another year or two. The real estate people I talked with was from Onnuri BuDongSan. Another thing I love about this area is that it's filled with very kind people, and the real estate people were no exception. They are located two steps outside of exit 2 of the subway station.

The third place I looked around was around Mangwon Station. I was hoping that being a little further out would make it easier to find more space, but alas, my initial search turned up nothing in particular. I went to ShinHan BuDongSanand albeit it was the end of the day and I'm certain it is hard not to get grumpy, but one of the woman there got quite an attitude. She was friendly at first, and asked my family friend how she and I were related, so my family friend said, in a curt manner, that it wasn't really of her concern. Then the woman became very rude and began talking over my family friend and ignoring her. It was a bit uncomfortable. The other woman there took over and tried to smooth things over by showing us some other available spaces. We looked at some studio apartments, but they were all still pretty small for the same or more than I'm paying now. There was one apartment that was on the top floor of the building next to the market, which would have been awesome. The market near Mangwon is a traditional style market, like Namdaemun, where people sell all sort of things, particularly fresh foods, for very reasonable prices. We found another real estate office (MT BuDongSan) and the woman there was very calm and kind, but only showed us some really expensive places. The area she showed us was quiet and peaceful, but above my price range. Third try of the third place was a BuDongSan called "OoRiJip" which means "our house." There was a really extremely pleasant man there, who found us a very nice one bedroom place one block away from the market. It had one room and a kitchen area next to the bathroom, then an open room, which leads into the kitchen. I was quite excited. It was a little bit higher than I wanted to pay, but the space was new, clean, and the location was phenomenal.

However, the next morning, he called to explain that he tried to ask the owner of the building to lower the rent price, and she, in spite, raised the deposit amount and the rent. But he offered to show us some other places. So, after looking around HyoChang area once more, I went to meet Mr. Lee. who showed us two more apartments, both loft apartments. The first one was extremely close to MapoGu Office Station, but was down a bit of a shady looking alleyway. The apartment was made for single businessmen, but not my style. The refrigerator was tiny and the washing machine would have to be bought and placed in a room down the hallway. Supposedly, the men that lived there generally didn't use washing machines and just paid for dry cleaning, so even the one was already out in the hallway wasn't used much. I went with another church friend this time, and her kid was so cute here. He loved the loft area, as it was just his size. The ceiling was approximately 1.5 or 2 inches from his head. The kid asked his mother if they could get the place. Finally, Mr. Lee connected us with Smile BuDongSan which had another loft apartment to show us. We all went to visit another building, about 10 minutes from the subway station, but the apartment was wonderful. It had a kitchen area with a table between the kitchen and the small living room area. The loft is tall enough that people can stand in it. And the rent price was lower than the other loft apartment. I'm really excited about this place.

Another good thing about apartment hunting was that I got a pretty good extended light exercise, walking around everywhere. :) I'll have to post pictures later, once I've moved in.