Housing nearly complete
Today I took a major step forward in the housing situation for this next season.
First, as a reminder, rental prices in Corvallis are on par with parts of Seattle, Portland, and other expensive, but not NY/San Francisco expensive, places. It's unbelievable, and quite frankly, unreasonable for a college town with a lot of fun stuff, but not what you or at least I would consider to be a home run college town.
So housing is a struggle, and the fact that I will be volunteering and putting in more time in the office or doing tasks than I did last year thus leaving less time to work means that renting an apartment was nearly an impossibility.
Enter in a crazy idea. I'll buy a travel trailer.
My thinking went something like this.
1. Rent in Corvallis is crazy expensive.
2. I'd like to live in Corvallis and not commute from Lebanon or Albany.
3. I'd like to spend more time at OSU, and less time working.
4. That said, I still need to work, but I can't work that much and still accomplish what I want.
So a trailer.
This is the manufacturer I went with, and opted for the "less popular" but very well appointed 236RBS floor plan. I was tempted to go with the larger 268RKS model, but decided against it because my truck wasn't big enough to haul it, and because it limited some of my options for parks.
So why this trailer? Well that's more difficult to answer because of the dealer I went through. I used Curtis Trailers in Beaverton/Aloha. My parents had gone through them for their trailers, so I knew what I was getting into. I also knew that this particular dealer went all out with the options for their trailers, which means that all the options on the trailer would be included without including the option price tag.
Total spent? With some extras I asked for them to put on, $26,000 - rounding up - with payments under $200 a month. Tack that onto the cost of a space in a park - roughly $480 a month - and we're talking my own place for under $700 a month, which is something impossible to do on your own in Corvallis.
Done and done.
First, as a reminder, rental prices in Corvallis are on par with parts of Seattle, Portland, and other expensive, but not NY/San Francisco expensive, places. It's unbelievable, and quite frankly, unreasonable for a college town with a lot of fun stuff, but not what you or at least I would consider to be a home run college town.
So housing is a struggle, and the fact that I will be volunteering and putting in more time in the office or doing tasks than I did last year thus leaving less time to work means that renting an apartment was nearly an impossibility.
Enter in a crazy idea. I'll buy a travel trailer.
My thinking went something like this.
1. Rent in Corvallis is crazy expensive.
2. I'd like to live in Corvallis and not commute from Lebanon or Albany.
3. I'd like to spend more time at OSU, and less time working.
4. That said, I still need to work, but I can't work that much and still accomplish what I want.
So a trailer.
This is the manufacturer I went with, and opted for the "less popular" but very well appointed 236RBS floor plan. I was tempted to go with the larger 268RKS model, but decided against it because my truck wasn't big enough to haul it, and because it limited some of my options for parks.
So why this trailer? Well that's more difficult to answer because of the dealer I went through. I used Curtis Trailers in Beaverton/Aloha. My parents had gone through them for their trailers, so I knew what I was getting into. I also knew that this particular dealer went all out with the options for their trailers, which means that all the options on the trailer would be included without including the option price tag.
Total spent? With some extras I asked for them to put on, $26,000 - rounding up - with payments under $200 a month. Tack that onto the cost of a space in a park - roughly $480 a month - and we're talking my own place for under $700 a month, which is something impossible to do on your own in Corvallis.
Done and done.
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