Craigslist Dictionary: What Those Terms REALLY Mean

Cara and I are both very accustomed to spending hours searching Craigslist for the perfect place to live. We're both extremely picky when it comes to the apartments we decide to live in. We moved into our current apartment in August after searching for months for the perfect place. It took us so long to find this place that my mom was convinced that I would be moving back in with her for a spell once I had transferred to Portland. I will admit, we did cut it extremely close. I was packing up my room a few days before official move-out day when I got the call from Cara that we had gotten that cute midcentury apartment in Northwest Portland. Our building was recently bought out, and the new owners really want us to leave so they can remove the cute seafoam green and pink tiling from the kitchen and turn the pantry into a laundry space. We don't have to move, but we are looking and the more ads I click on, the wiser I get about what the renters really mean. I am prepared to pass this information on to you to enlighten and save you hours of clicking on intriguing titles only to find the home of your nightmares under the link.

sorry it had to end like this, little guy.

Great Location: Not a very good location

Newer: Brown carpeting and fake granite countertops

Charming: Lots of cute touches (I've been known to use this as a search term)

Classic North Portland: Craftsman style

NW 24th and Irving: Nob Hill Apartments (no one wants to live there)

Cottage: Too small to call a house

Quiet Neighborhood: Bad location

NW Hills: Forest Creek Apartments (also terrible, and they overpost like crazy)

****: The landlord is a D-Bag

Any cutesy title (i.e: "These will fly out the door", or "It's March Madness"): A terrible photoshopped flyer that shows gigantic pictures of airplanes, or puppies, or basketballs and tiny pictures, if any of a gross apartment

Gorgeous: Really Ugly

Vintage: Like charming, but everything looks a little older

Forest Views: See NW Hills

Rent Specials: The agency can't rent the place without some sort of deal

As you can see, we are extremely picky, but it always seems to work out for us in the end. I mean really, we're going to live there, we can't just settle for any place. We need to love it or we'll just be doing this again sometime very soon. Now that we've learned what to avoid, the hunting takes less and less out of our days and we really only spend our time on the places we'll actually want to live.