Late last year my wife and I found ourselves homeless. Well, between homes, but "home-less" no…read moreless. We were waiting on a new build that was postponed and this caused us to be in a position to have to vacate our old house, leaving a three months window in which we needed to find a place to stay. It was a hard, exhausting search when my wife and I needed to find a place in the interim, as most landlords/apartment managers didn't care to rent short term.
The first place I looked was The Sidway after seeing a few of its advertisements for apartments on Craig's List. I met with one of the apartment managers named Laura. She showed us the building and the prospective apartments. We were originally looking for a one bedroom, and liked the one bedroom she showed us (it was around $900). However, our needs started to gravitate towards a two bedroom due to the fact that we have a baby and we were starting to realize that babies cry a lot. We loved the two bedroom, but had just begun our search for a place and were convinced at the time that we could find an equally pleasing abode for a cheaper price (two bedrooms are around $1300 a month).
WE WERE WRONG.
About a month later we had ran the gauntlet of smelly, dirty, expensive, stupid apartments in less desirable places in the downtown area, many of which had weirdoes for landlords (one guy had a 7 ft. tall Russian woman stand behind him the whole time he showed me the apartment that stared me down like a feminine Ivan Drago. Another one, an old lady wanted us to live in her attic...probably, I assume, until she could poison us and make fancy hats out of our skins). Good apartments were ranging in price from $900 to $1500, but almost all the cheaper ones weren't on The Sidway's level and wouldn't rent to us short term. Man, was I glad to see that The Sidway had a two bedroom vacancy.
As I said, our two bedroom apartment went for about $1300, but that price included Time Warner cable and water. Heat is also included in the building, but each apartment has a heat pump powered by the electricity (the electric bill is the only utility not included in the price). However, even though we used the heat pump often, our electric bill's increase was very minor. They had and still have a "Home Town Heroes" discount (military, fire fighters, etc.), where they take $250 off the first month's rent.
The area is as good as it gets: practically across the street from Shea's Theater and right on the border of Allentown. We were within walking distance of great restaurants, downtown entertainment and my work... Ok, I may have been a little too excited to walk to work. Big deal.
The building is mainly comprised of younger professionals, many of whom live alone or without kids (we were THAT couple that brought a baby, but no one seemed to mind or notice). It seemed like everyone had a dog though, so pets aren't an issue.
The accommodations were top notch. There is a storage cell in the basement for each apartment, a couple of recreation games (ping-pong & air hockey) for you and your guests, a free coffee bar in the downstairs lobby, a gym/exercise room and a clean and tidy laundry room that costs under $3 a load. The Sidway even has its own online portal that you can pay your rent and keep track of other important information.
Lastly, and perhaps my favorite reason that you should rent from The Sidway: the staff is exemplary. We did most of our dealing with another property manager named Olya. She never wasted anytime getting back to us with any question we had and was always polite and professional. If we ever even thought about a complaint she immediately worked everything out for us. Any minor service issue (light bulb out, something not working, etc.) was handled by Paul, and he was always prompt and courteous just the same. And then there's Robert, the Door Man. Aside from opening the door and shooting the obligatory small talk with you, I've seen him doing a litany of other small tasks around the building for other tenants. Best of all, none of the staff ever tried to poison us and make us into hats.
I recommended The Sidway to one of my other co-workers who moved in the following week. You wanna be next? [leasing@sidwaybuffalo.com]
