I had forgotten that apartment shopping was like shopping for a car.  First of all we were fortunate, or according to Luke - unfortunate, to be provided with a service through Microsoft that sets you up with an "apartment finder."  In our case the "apartment finder" was in the form of a lady who enjoyed the complimentary cookies at each rental office, but didn't enjoy the lengthy tours of the apartments if it meant walking outside into the cold.  Which wasn't that big of a deal...Alyssa did it. :)   She parted from her PT Cruiser to join us in our "luxury car" as she called it.  (She went on and on about how nice our car was and that she thought she was riding in a Lexus...I guess she was fooled by the fake leather seats and the Passat label on the bumper).  She wound us around town, cutting through parking lots and around parks showing us the newer complexes in the area and their radius from Microsoft (which was less than necessary as we told her we were familiar with the commute).  I did however think that it was nice to have someone driving around with us pointing out little things about the services of the town (e.x. grocery store comparisons and good auto repair places) and speaking to which apartments where newer and older and such.  Although, at one point when we showed up for a tour and she decided not to go with us, the lady giving us the tour was very verbal about how pleased she was to NOT have our "shadow" follow us around on the tour because "they are so annoying" - Luke concurred.

Okay so back to my comparison of cars and apartment sales people.  Once we arrived to any given apartment complex office we were asked about our apartment requirements/needs followed by our price range and then asked to turn over our driver license in order to take a tour.  Driver licence.  Hmm.  This made no sense whatsoever to us.  Why in the world do they take your driver license captive into their locked desk drawer while we are taken on a tour of the facilities.  My only thought is so that we have to come back to the office before we get in the car to leave so that they can try to convince us to rent an apartment.  Because as we arrived back to the office from our tour we were given the car sales pitch, I mean the apartment sales pitch.  About how they have a special going on for 'a limited time only' and it's not under their power to give you deals after today, although with a deposit they could hold the deal up to 24hrs, etc.  One place told us that the offer they were giving expired that same day, although to date I have received 2 telephone calls from that same place letting me know that the deal is "surprisingly" still available for "x" amount of days if we are still interested.  Such invisible pressure.  Especially when you take a step back and realize that there will ALWAYS be a deal and if you want the same exact deal then you just wait a little bit longer untill it comes back around OR call and haggle for the same deal with the promise of a same day lease. 

So what exactly is the difference between an apartment sales department and an auto sales department - the gender.  I wonder if they date each other because they would make good couples and get such great couple discounts.

To our surprise, our auto and condo insurance sales person does not use the same tactics which has been a pleasant surprise - yeay for Allstate.