Location, Location… (You Can’t Have Three)

I am working at a company that decides to shut down our office on the west coast of the USA and move anybody who wants to go to the Boston area. My wife and I are interested, so they make arrangements to fly us out to look for housing. They also get us in touch with a relocation agent that is supposed to help us find housing. The agent sends us a form, which we fill out, that indicates that we are looking for a HOUSE — not an apartment, condo, etc. Also, we note that we need at least three rooms.

This happens when we arrive in the Boston area and the agent picks us up to go look at housing.

Agent: “I’ve looked through all the information you sent me, and I have some great places lined up to go see. Let’s go find you a place to live!”

Wife & Me: “Great, we’re really excited!”

We arrive at the first place, and it’s a college dorm that has been converted to apartments. It’s probably the furthest thing away from a house that you could describe.

Me: “This is an apartment.”

Agent: “Yes.”

Me: “We filled out that we wanted to look at houses, not apartments.”

Agent: “I know, but I know this place is really great, and I thought I would show it to you just in case.”

She walks us around the place and shows us a couple of the super-small dorm-room-type apartments. Most are single rooms; some have two rooms. After looking around a short time:

Me: “I think we are done looking here; it’s not what we are looking for. Let’s go to the next place.”

Agent: “Okay. Are you sure? This place is very trendy!”

Wife: “We’re sure; plus, none of those are three bedrooms. We need three bedrooms.”

Agent: “Okay, let’s go to the next place.”

She brought us to four other apartment complexes, every time trying to sell us on the idea that we really wanted an apartment and not a house. Most were only one or two bedrooms; only one had three-bedroom units available.  

After a wasted day, the agent dropped us back at our hotel and handed us applications from the places we’d been to. I grabbed them, not looking at them then, and said thanks, and we left to go inside. My wife and I were very frustrated at that point. I started looking at the applications in my hand and I noticed something. All the complexes were run by the same management company. Clearly, she was trying to get us to rent from this company, probably because she got a kickback of some type.

In the end, we ended up not moving to Boston, though I did express to my manager what a frustrating experience it was with the relocation agent they had sent us to, and I told him what happened.

He later got back to me and said they had talked to several other people who were trying to move out also, and all of them said the same thing. She showed everyone the same five places, no matter what they said on their forms. He tried to get me and my wife to go out again and give it another go with a completely different agent, but by that time, we had decided not to relocate.