This is an advert for an apartment share in a terrific location (College Avenue, Palo Alto):

• 6 min cycle (15 min walk) to Stanford campus;
• 4 min walk to Cal Ave Caltrain station;
• 2 min walk to California Avenue (shops, restaurants, and Sunday farmer's market).
• 10 min cycle to Palo Alto Downtown (more shops, restaurants, cinema etc)

The apartment
The apartment has two fairly large bedrooms (one of which would be yours, see photo), a shared bathroom (with bath plus shower), large shared living space, and a shared kitchen. The room will not be furnished. The remainder of the flat has some furnishings (dining table, couch etc). The kitchen has plenty of stuff: pots and pans, cutlery, plates etc etc, and various appliances (fridge, oven, electric hob, toaster, rice cooker, kettle) which you are welcome to use.

House mate
You would be sharing with me, Tom, a 28 year old Stanford post-doc who moved to California 6 months ago from the UK. I'm pretty easy going - if you want to hang out sometimes and have beer / watch a film etc then that's good by me - if you just want your own space, that's fine too. I like to keep things reasonably clean and tidy.

Contract
The rent is very good for the area! If you decide to move in, you and I would sign a new contract together with the landlord so we would have shared responsibility for the apartment. We both pay $1200 a month. The nice thing is its a rolling monthly contract - so if you decide to move out, you just have to give one months notice. That being said, it would be nice if you're planning to stay for the medium-long term (e.g., 6 months +).

Utilities (water, internet etc) are usually in the $60-80 range.

The landlord will require you to fill out an application form and will require 1/2 of the first month's rent and 1/2 of the last month's rent, plus a security deposit of $175.00.

Move-in date
The current housemate you would be replacing is planning to move out around the 16th July.

Landlord requirements
The landlord has asked me to pass on the following requirements:

• you must have a steady job
• excellent credit (note: if you're from abroad you might not have a credit rating in the US yet. This probably won't be an issue - it wasn't for me).
• excellent references
• can pay the monthly rent
• must be a non smoker
• no pets

Other details
Car parking space - I don't have a car (yet) so this could be all yours! There's also plenty of on-street parking
Extra outside storage space - I don't have much stuff, so this could be all yours too!
Onsite washer and dryer

Arranging a viewing
If you're interested, I'm sure you would like to come and have a look at the place and meet me, and I'd like to meet you! The only problem is that I am going away on a trip to Europe between 27th June and the 10th July. I will be trying to fit in viewings before and after this. If you are free to come and look this weekend (24th, 25th) then that would be ideal.

Drop me an e-mail (hardwickete@gmail.com) letting me know a bit about yourself and roughly what times you would be available to come and see the place.

Cheers!
Tom