Leases and Letting Go

This morning I was looking over some of my blog posts from a year ago, and I am just amazed by all the changes that have happened in just the past year. A year ago we were deciding to sell the house and figuring out how to do that. That decision led us to rent a condo that we live in right now. A year ago my spouse thought he never ever wanted to leave South Florida, so when the landlady asked if we would consider a two year lease, even though I had some hesitation, I agreed. I knew it was a good deal, and all the utilities were included in the rent, so it would make budgeting easier.

As summer and fall progressed, the job that I thought I was going to lose transformed into something else, which seemed to be permanent for about two months, and then I was told that the company had a different vision than my vision for the students, although no one would ever doubt that I had the best interests of students at heart. By then it was February of 2022, and my spouse was ready to leave South Florida. We've been turning around all sorts of possibilities in the past several months.

There was just one problem, of course.  We did sign a two year lease, and our landlady could have been very ugly about it. Ugly is the wrong word. She had every right to expect us to be here through July of 2023. Technically we are liable for all of that rent.

However, in the tri county area where I live in South Florida, rents have gone up over 50% in the past year. I had hopes that our landlady might be open to letting us out of the lease since she could get more rent money from someone else. I also know that the condo building has expensive repairs to the swimming pool in the near future, which will probably result in assessments for the owners, so I figured that our landlady might welcome the chance to get some extra money with new renters.

And happily that is what has happened.  About a month ago, my spouse had let our landlady know that I lost my job but that we had some money in savings. A few days ago she wrote to ask if we had any thoughts about ending the lease early, so we decided to take that opportunity to come up with a plan and to get her approval. The month of July will be our last month with this lease. We are happy to be helpful with showing the place to potential renters, so that's a plus for her.  But the biggest plus for her of course is that she can get so much more rent for this condo than we were paying.

I've enjoyed living here in many ways. It's easy to pop over to the grocery store to pick up something we need for dinner. There are times when I like being this close to the Arts Park.  While it is a hassle to park in the parking garage in some ways, it means our vehicles are safer in other ways. Our condo has the most reliable Internet I've had in a residence so far. If I was a woman living alone, a condo like this  would be ideal in terms of security. My spouse has been less happy here--he misses the chance to garden and be outdoors surrounded by trees and sunshine. I will always wonder if he would have been more happy if the pool had been available. The condo has a lovely rooftop pool which has been out of commission since before we moved in.

As with many things, the condo building has amenities that I haven't really taken advantage of. There's a small indoor gym downstairs, which I've used about three times.  It's been a comfort to remember that there is a computer room downstairs, but happily our computers have held together. There are comfortable public spaces where one might read, but I don't really use them.

I might have made a lot of different choices had I known a year ago what I know now--but when isn't that true? Overall it's worked out. And now on to packing and the next phase.