A week or two's vacation in the place you were considering would have sidestepped leasing a place like this, BUT that vacation would have made you more likely to decide to stay in the area, as it's easy to confuse the feeling of 'being on vacation' with that of 'actually living in a place'.

Fortunately, I'm still married - to a spouse who's a good bit more rational than me :-)

But I still regret not buying that seafront property in the Azores - and the one on Molokai (admittedly only a couple of feet above sea level), and the one...