Location Location Location

Mary and I love to househunt. We look every few years, we randomly pop into open houses when out for walks, and we watch and enjoy TV shows dedicated entirely to househunting. When HGTV came out with an international version of House Hunters, we were in hog heaven. We even discovered a UK version called Location Location Location, which was in ways superior to the US one (it's a full hour! It follows up with folks over a year later!) The apartment hunt in London, then, should have been a dream come true.

We admittedly got a late start to things, since we had focused early energy on trying to set up a bank account. This is a huge process here, at least at the first bank we selected. Later, we discovered that Lloyd's is the bank of immigrants, and they proved willing to work with us. It was still a 45 minute, in-person meeting to set it up, mind you, but at least I walked out with an account. Focusing on this process put us behind on the househunt, so we were on a tight schedule when things began.

One thing we did do well was to scout out neighborhoods in advance. Folks had told us that we needed to go into it with a few in mind, so for the first few weekends we made sure to wander different parts of the city, following up on recommendations from folks. We loved the Islington area, but could tell from the getgo that it would likely be too pricey for our budget. The Docklands had nice amenities, and seemed like a nice alternative (though it feels a touch synthetic, sort of like London's City of Tomorrow!)

Armed with a few neighborhoods in mind, we reached out to some lettings agents which seems to be how most properties are rented, here. These agents are neighborhood-specific, so coming in knowing the area you want is key. Thankfully we were using larger, multi-office agencies so at least they could refer us to other offices.

The first signs of trouble arose when we were told that there were zero properties in the Docklands area that allow cats. Turns out that while 90% of landlords in Chicago allow cats, in London 90% don't. I will admit that this put both of us on our back feet and got us pretty nervous. We spent every weekend and night for a week sorting listing, having new neighborhoods suggested, and going to see unsuitable properties.

And such unsuitable properties they were! We saw one that was literally across the street from a 50,000 seat football (soccer) arena, yet didn't have a single pub or restaurant walking distance away. We saw one that was reasonably OK -- if dated -- until we discovered the bedroom which was under the front stairs, barely wide enough for the double bed in it, and painted bright red. We looked at a small place with a lot of character, or at least we think it had a lot of character, because all of the power seemed to be off when we saw it despite it having a current resident. We also saw a reasonably-sized loft which effectively had unfinished plywood boxes for kitchen cabinets. It was quite an adventure.

In part, we are accustomed to owning and to looking for places to own. When you are listing your own property, you do everything you can to make it appeal to buyers. You spruce it up, stage it, and keep it neat and tidy. When you are a renter and folks are coming to view a place, you just go right ahead and leave the thin film of filth that has accumulated on all flat surfaces. This definitely made it a bit harder for us to see ourselves in units, and we had to think hard to separate a dirty tenant from a bad landlord that did not maintain the property.

One thing that we did learn, is that folks in London are apparently obsessed with double glazing. Agents went out of their way to mention that places had it, which just seemed odd to Mary and I.

Around about this point, we expanded our search South from the city, to some neighborhoods that folks fleeing the prices and sizes of closer in favor. We had actually tried to visit this way before, but train issues on various weekends cut that short. Our third attempt to get down South was the day that we were to meet our agent for a 10:00 am appointment, but when we got to the office we discovered that she had just called in due to her car being towed. We had taken a 35 minute train ride down, so we were not that excited to waste the trip. We ended up wandering in the area a bit, and we actually found that it could work for us. It was further out than we had wanted to be, but it had some nice pubs and shops and seemed clean and safe. Finally, something with promise!

We rescheduled our appointment with the towed woman for the following Monday and Mary came down alone, as I had some meetings I could not move. There were a few places with some promise, though again there were some lemons. One place was nice, but not available until weeks after our short let was up. One looked nice in the listing, but then a landlord who had accepted pets in the past changed his mind. Mary saw a place that seemed big enough (with a horror-movie basement for storage) but with a very odd layout which required passing through bedrooms to get to the lounge and the kitchen to get to the bath.

Finally, we got an email from our agent in the South suggesting a new place that had just come on the market. It was newly renovated and large, with two bedrooms. She had worked with the landlord before and had positive things to say about him. We headed down after work that evening to meet her there. The area around the Tube stop was cute, and the walk from there to the apartment was longish but reasonable. The place seemed nice and clean, and the area it was in was nice. It had lots of space, and even had a yard I could work with. The yard was a mess from the renovation that had been done in the unit, but the landlord was planning on waiting until spring and then having it cleaned up and doing some planting all at once. It was clean, safe, and had the most space of everything we'd seen. We took it.

And by "we took it", I mean we started the process. Because this is London, and everything is a process. We made an offer and gave two weeks rent as good faith money. We then needed to get references in place. Our agent made this seem like it would be a big deal at first, and like it could be challenging for us due to being foreign and not having accounts set up here yet. It ended up being not that bad. A lot of what he needed ended up overlapping with what we had provided for the Visas, so I still had scans on my machine. The nice lady in my HR department was able to modify a letter she had written when I was trying to get the bank account, and we were set. We then waited for the landlord to accept the offer (I was later told these rarely fall through at this point) and once he did we were set. All I needed to do was get a UK bank account set up (you need to show that you have set up an automatic payment for the rent, and that can only come from a UK account) and pay the rest of the deposit (which was slightly higher due to the cats.) Simple as that! By which I mean, a huge, time consuming process.

But at least, as our neighbor pointed out when we met him, we have double glazing.