Our first foray into apartment hunting in 2013 was not a bad first outing. We did get to see a quality place and learned that this particular area was not our cup of tea. We went back to the hunt and found an interesting place in a format neither of us had any real experience with: the triplex.
(not the actual unit we saw but this captures the essence)
Apartment #2: The Triplex
The ‘plex’ style of building is usually a shorter building that generally houses 3 or more units within it. They appear frequently in certain pockets of the Greater Toronto Area, though this style of building fell out of fashion a long time ago for whatever reason. Nowadays, Toronto is cookie-cutter condo crazy. Oddly, Steff and I have never really spent any time in a ‘plex’ building before, so we didn’t really know what we were getting into.
Similar to our last experience, the drive to this building really hurt its cause. While this area felt a lot safer than the last, it was in the middle of nowhere. Even with a car, you would need a good 10-15 minutes to get to any real commercial area, which was a huge con for us. Because the last place had made us grasp how important area was to our search, this appointment was also already over before it began. At this point, we were going almost solely for academic purposes of learning about the triplex experience.
We met the landlord at the front and he led us in through a side entrance. The unit that was up for grabs was on the main floor. Though he was not quite done his renovations, what we had seen was in really good shape. The hardwood had been redone, the walls repainted, and the bathroom completely renovated. Space wise, it was on the larger side as well. Generally impressed with what I saw, I also took a few pictures of the place for reference.
It was a nice place that someone probably calls home, but it wasn’t for us. The area was not what we were looking for, and the building itself had a few quirks that we weren’t ready to cope with, such as weirdly expensive coin laundry. However, with each trip, we get to learn more about what we really want out of a place. This further solidified how important area was to us, while opening our eyes to the ‘plex’ style of building. We came away from this thinking that this style of unit may be a viable option for us in the end. With that knowledge in our grasp, we continued our search with an openness to ‘plex’-style buildings that we didn’t have before.
In Third Person 