We Have Moved On!

If you have been following our personal condo rental saga of late, you likely know of our decision to move. Not back to the Philippines or to another island, but to a different condominium in Guam.

After nine years in the same condo, the landlord was becoming antsy of sorts and looking for more money and, we were forced to move. Not directly, but by coersive means. Let me explain. We rented this 2br, 2ba condo in 2017 for $1,300 per month, which I thought was very reasonable at the time. We signed a one-year lease and have been in a holdover tenancy status ever since, meaning "on 30-day notice," by either party. Over the past couple years, the landlord has become increasingly persistant that we renew the lease, at a higher rate of rent, but I have resisted knowing they really couldn't risk loosing such great tenants.

Rents Have Gone Flat!

While rent pressures here on Guam have been on the squeeze of late (local economy-wise), I felt that an increase was not justifiable. So, I held out. Fast forward to two weeks ago, our airconditioning failed. Our Japanese landlord, feeling this might be an opportunistic time to renegotiate the lease, dragged his feet in timely fashion to repair the A/C unit, likely thinking this would force us to come to the table. As luck would have it, and having suffed through 5 days of no air conditioning, the timing was perfect. It forced me to find and immediatly secure a better condo unit in the same complex (for $100 more) and we gave our 30-day notice one day before the holdover period expired. Because our previous unit was on the top floor, our cooling bill was significantly higher than the floors below this level, and the new condo one floor below is expected to be almost $100 lower to be exact.

It's a win-win for us as we can experience the same overall cost with no steps to climb! Climbing stairs with groceries is never easy and definitely not A.D.A. compliant, so this was an easy decision for us. Best of all, we negotiated a long-term lease with the option to purchase with the 1st right of refusal at the end of the lease. What that basically means is that we are first in line should we exercise that right.

And because we have 30 days to move out, you would think we would
have taken our time, but no. It's never easy living 'in-between'
(happy wife=happy life) so we pushed forward and moved everything
in a weeks time. Living out of boxes is also not easy so we took our
time as we moved to set up the new residence as we moved... like
drilling holes in concrete, hanging shelves, kitchen set-up, and all that.
We chose to move everything ourselves, except for the beds and the
sofa. That we hired out for $200. Everything else was moved by us
with the help of two beach wagons and a two-wheeled hand-truck
(dolly).

So we are basically all settled in and we're happy (after a short period of sufferage), the cats are happy (after a longer period of sufferage), and I didn't have to move the Harley. So, all is well in the Tropic Shade, except I need a bit of rest and recupperation. My back hurts.