Looking for an Apartment

Hello English learners! Welcome back to EnglishPod! My name is Marco.

And I’m Erica.

And today we have a special lesson for all of you, who are looking for a new apartment or a house.

Or even if you’re not looking for an apartment, this lesson will be useful, because it can help you describe what your current apartment or house looks like.

That’s right. So we’re gonna be describing an apartment and other vocabulary related to apartment hunting. Why don’t we take a look at some of the first words that we have in “vocabulary preview”? Voice: Vocabulary preview.

We’re gonna hear these two words in the dialogue. The first one is landlord.

Landlord.

Landlord.

Alright, so, who is a landlord? Or what is a landlord?

Well, it’s pretty simple. A landlord is the person, who owns the house.

Okay.

Or apartment.

So, the owner of the house.

Right. Um, and a landlord rents out the apartment to the tenants.

Okay, very good. Tenants.

Tenants.

So, the tenants are the people that are renting the apartment or house.

Exactly.

Two important words that we’ll find in the dialogue – tenants and landlord.

So, why don’t we take a listen to the dialogue now and we’ll hear as a couple is checking out a new apartment.

Alright, so, apparently the apartment was too good to be true.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s exactly what they’re expecting to find in the bathroom.

Hehe. Exactly, well, we did find a lot of great words and phrases. So, why don’t we take a look at that now in “language takeaway”? Voice: Language takeaway.

We’re just gonna look at a bunch of vocabulary items related to apartments and, um, house hunting. So, we’ve got a lot to cover here, so let’s get started with the first one – renovated.

Renovated.

Renovated.

Alright, so, and the apartment was newly renovated.

Okay, so, the verb to renovate. Uh, great word and I think some examples will help us understand the meaning. Voice: Example one.

I had to renovate my kitchen, because I accidentally burned everything while cooking. Voice: Example two.

The city recently renovated the sealing of the local church. Voice: Example three.

John is planning on renovating his night club so as to make it more modern.

Okay, so, basically to renovate means to make new again.

Right, when you renovate a house or an apartment, um, you… you know, take everything down and build it back up again.

Okay, so, it’s usually only used for buildings, for apartments, for houses.

Or offices.

You don’t say you renovate your computer.

Yeah. And also, um, when you just do something really simple like change the paint color, that’s not a renovation.

Okay.

That’s redecoration. When you renovate, you have to like, you know, use a hammer and saw and lots of tools.

Change…

Yeah.

A lot.

Yeah.

Okay. So, the apartment was newly renovated and it was bright and airy.

Airy.

Airy.

Airy.

Alright, so, airy… well, I guess we understand the word air, right?

Yeah.

So, if an apartment or a something is airy…

Has lots of space…

So…

Lots of place to move around.

Okay, so, it’s wide, it’s…

It’s open.

It’s open.

Uhu.

Okay.

Yeah.

An open apartment. Very good. Now, for our next word - an important question she asked for the square footage.

Square footage.

The square footage of the apartment.

Okay, so, we know square foot, right?

Uhu.

So, feet like, um, a measure of… of space.

Right.

Uh, the square footage is just basically the area, how big.

Okay. So, why don’t we listen to some examples of how we can use these two words – square footage in a sentence? Voice: Example one.

As a civil engineer I have to calculate the square footage of the construction site. Voice: Example two.

Robert is worried that the square footage of this land is not big enough. Voice: Example three.

If you multiply the width of the room on the length, you will have the square footage of the room.

Those are some great examples. And I find this, uh… the ending of this word “-age”, footage … it’s interesting, isn’t it?

Yeah, I guess you can only use it with the imperial system.

Uh, so you can also say tonnage.

Right.

So how… how big, how heavy.

Uhu.

Or mileage.

Mileage.

Uhu.

Right, but you can’t say, for example, in meters… you… we… you wouldn’t say meterage.

No, you can’t say that.

Right?

Yep.

So, it’s not for the metric system, it’s only for some units of measurement in the imperial system.

Exactly.

Alright, so, after we’ve measured the square footage of the apartment, we saw that they had new ap… appliances.

Appliances.

Appliances.

Appliance.

So, kitchen appliances, what are those?

Machines that do stuff in a kitchen.

Alright, so, a blender, a stove, a microwave.

Yep.

Or I can say “electric appliances”.

So, like your TV, um, and iron, uh, vacuum cleaner.

Okay, so, appliance can be any type of machine that’s used…

In a house.

In a house.

Yeah.

And, well, one of these appliances was a professional-grade gas range.

Okay, this is great phrase and I wanna break it down. So, a gas range… now, this is basically a stove, right?

Okay.

Um, that’s… that uses gas instead of electricity.

So, I can have an electric range.

Exactly. Now, professional-grade… this is something that’s really high quality.

So, if it’s high quality, why do we say it’s professional-grade?

Cause it’s so good that professionals use it.

Okay, so, can I only have professional-grade kitchen appliances?

No, of course not. You can have a professional-grade anything like a professional-grade carpet, for example.

Okay, or a professional-grade pickup truck.

Uhu, or you can even change this a little bit and say “industrial-grade”.

So, after we’ve seen all the appliances, they described the house as spacious.

Spacious.

The house is very spacious.

Pretty easy. We know the word space here, right?

Right.

So, obviously, this means…

It…

Lots of space.

It has lots of space.

Yep.

So, I guess maybe spacious and airy are a little bit similar, right?

Yeah, uhu.

Okay. And, of course, once we were in the master bedroom, we saw that they had a walk-in closet.

A walk-in closet.

Walk-in closet.

A walk-in closet.

Right, so, this is very easy. I guess walk-in…

You can walk into it.

Right. And so, it’s a huge closet, right?

Yeah, it’s… now, just… a note on the spelling here… walk-in are hyphenated. [NOTE: hyphenated = with a hyphen, “–“]

Okay, walk-in closet.

Uhu.

Very good. And apart from this beautiful closet we had an en-suite bathroom. [NOTE: apart from = besides]

En-suite bathroom.

En-suite bathroom.

Alright, another note on the spelling here. It’s E-N-…

Right.

Hyphen-S-U-I-T-E.

So, even though it’s “E-N”, we pronounce it like an “O-N”.

Yep.

On-suite.

So, an en-suite bathroom is a bathroom inside the room.

Okay, inside the master bedroom.

Uhu.

Very good. On-suite bathroom. So, a lot of great words describing the… the apartment and also other aspects of real estate.

So, why don’t we listen to these one more time in context and we’ll see how they fit together to describe an apartment?

Alright, so, this is always… kind of difficult to look for a new apartment and to go and see them. But it’s interesting here – they were renting and they had a real estate agent.

Yeah, um, and actually this is very uncommon in America, isn’t it?

Yeah, I guess you don’t really use a real estate agent unless you’re going to buy a house or apartment.

Uhu. So, when you’re renting you just go and look by yourself.

Right, you can find ads in the newspaper, on the Internet and deal directly with the landlord.

Right. So, after you’ve done your house hunting and found your apartment, um, you gotta set up the payment conditions.

Right, like we saw in the dialogue… the payment terms were first and last months rent as deposit.

Uhu.

So, that’s basically they’ll keep that just in case you damage something in the apartment.

Or have a monster living in your bathroom.

Hehe. Exactly. And another thing is that I’ve noticed in some countries you pay rent in advance.

Right, so, in America you only pay, um, one month rent at a time, right?

Right. So, I guess this is an interesting topic - real estate and apartment hunting and renting is different in different countries. So, that’s where you guys need to come and tell us how is… how does this work in your country?

You can also use some of the vocabulary in this dialogue to tell us about your apartment.

Right, how many rooms do you have? Bedrooms, dining rooms?

What’s the square footage?

Exactly. Or how many square meters, right?

Yep. So, check out our website englishpod.com.

Alright, and we’ll see you guys there.

Thanks for listening and until next time… Good bye!

Bye!