UPDATE 6/15/07: According to comments, this place is rented now.I wouldn't normally include anything east of 39th, but I was browsing the Capital Property Management site and noticed that this one-bedroom at Lanning Court was only $595. Seems like a great deal until you realize that the apartment coming up is Apartment A.
This means one of two things: It's either a basement apartment or (more likely) it's on the ground floor right next to the front door. Portland had an interesting law on the books in the 1920s: Any residential building over two floors required an elevator. Builders got around this by calling the ground floor the basement. Therefore, apartments on what we would normally call the second floor start with 101, 102, etc. and apartments on what we would normally call the the first floor start with A, B, etc. At least, this is what a Portland building inspector once told me.
Stay with me here, because here's where it gets a little complicated: Most 1920s buildings were originally heated by a big ol' boiler. Because of those harsh laws of gravity, boilers had to be in the basement so steam could rise up to the radiators. That means that apartments on the same level as the boiler had to have radiators installed on the ceilings. So sometimes in these old 1920s apartments labeled as A, B, etc., you'll find a network of steam pipes just below your ceiling. Some people find that charming, others find it too industrial. I've even seen landlords or owners installing those drop-down acoustic tile ceilings (like you'd find in offices) to hide the pipes--something I find deplorable that should be punishable by a life sentence in a 2-bedroom apartment in Clackamas.
I've never been to Lanning Court, so all of this could be entirely untrue. All I know is that if other one-bedrooms in the neighborhood are going for an average of $100 more per month, then something about unit A over there might be a little funky. Of course, I could be completely wrong with all of this conjecture, and this is just the best deal in the neighborhood. It's at 4263 SE Belmont, and their number is 503-288-7368.
2 comments:
This one has an application now....
This place I lived in Denver had a similar boiler construction, because of it extremely cheap rent... because all you heard in winter was the massive creaking of steam through the exposed pipes in your unit, and it was difficult to keep a reasonable temperature even on the actual second floor (and I am kin of HVAC engineers, so it says alot.) All in all though, kind of livable, until when I moved back for a second lease I found out 2 months in that the building had bedbugs 'fore I even moved in... slum lords, they at least gave me my deposit back after I cited the limited rental rights in CO- namely, you cannot keep from the prosp. tenant the fact that there is an infestation that goes beyond 'reasonable'.
(Don't expect you'd actually post this comment, but wanted to let you know I've got some compassion for tenants dealing with big boilers... and coincidentally in Denver they labeled the apartment numbers as you just described- wonder if there is a correlation in code-maneuvering? :) ) Seriously- thank you for your blog- I predict it has fulfilled my research needs for my expected move to PDX. Ladd's Addition seems like a good neighborhood, and maybe where I will be interested. Thanks.
christina-
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