::A Geek in Korea::

Today, my wife and I were on our second round of searching for an apartment. The previous attempt led us to investigate a house around our neighborhood. This time, we were traveling several subway stops down the line to try to find a cheaper place we had been alerted to by a friend. We contacted the realtor and told her to meet us at the apartment.

We arrived to see the apartment. We got into the elevator with our realtor and then met the housing realtor. The apartment was open, so we walked around. While we were viewing the apartment, an old grandmother, wrinkled and hunched over on a cane, walked into the apartment and sat down.

She didn’t live there. She didn’t have an appointment. She was just some random old woman that came in while this apartment was open to a public viewing. She was sitting on the floor asking questions about who we were, and why we were there. She didn’t look like she was on top of her senses. She reminded me of my grandfather who couldn’t remember much when he got older, and she had wandered into our housing deal.

Why WE were there? Why was this random person there? WE had made the arrangements to see the apartment in the first place! She said she liked the house. She didn’t walk around to examine it, or see anything. She just sat on the floor and kept eying me.

Everyone in the room was thinking she was a senile old woman. She kept trying to stay in the apartment while we were leaving, and had to be shown out of the apartment by the realtors. Every time they went to get her to leave, she kept on talking about random stuff and told them she could stay in the house. They were confused about why she was there, but didn’t really want to toss her out since she might not have know what was going on. Since you have to be kind to elderly people who aren’t in the best state of health, they said, “If you like the apartment, here is our card. Bring money to the office and you can buy it.”

We dismissed the old lady after the elevator let us down to the ground floor. We had two more apartments to see. We looked at another apartment in a different complex, then came around to see an apartment nearby the first one. We had to get to work, so we didn’t spend much time at any one place.

After seeing the third apartment that had been remodeled (we had considered this option), we had settled on buying the first apartment. It was in our price range, the location was good, it was near to most things we needed. We didn’t have financing worked out yet, but we were planning on going to the bank to get our loan this week to sort out the details.

The realtor joked, “Please, decide quickly. Maybe that old lady might buy that apartment. Who knows you might have competition?” This is a standard tactic. The first house we saw INSTANTLY had a second bidder an hour after we had visited the place, despite being on the open market for months. No one falls for this sort of thing, and besides, the lady couldn’t walk without a cane, and didn’t even know what was going on.

We were talking about how much we liked our apartment choice, and how nice it will be to live there as we rode back on the subway. Then we get a message.

The old woman had gone straight to the realtor’s office when we had been walking around seeing the other apartments over the course of thirty minutes. She bought the thing out from under us. We won’t get the apartment, she will. She hadn’t made an appointment, didn’t check out the place, didn’t have anyone helping her, was hunched over, and didn’t even look like she could have MADE it to the realtor’s office in 30 minutes by herself, but she was quicker on the turn around than we were.

The old freaking crazy lady stole our apartment. Now we have to go out looking for a new place to look AGAIN. What the hell, Grandma?