Flat hunting, part 1
For the past few years the wifemonster and I have been contemplating buying a flat. We'd both lived in rented accommodation for the majority of our lives, and had come to realise that we'd been staying put in once place for an awful long time. We moved into that flat in 2003 and 1) were bursting at the seams and 2) really wanted to have furniture we liked and put holes in the walls to hang up things.
We'd started thinking about buying in 2006, and just dabbled in the idea. Looking at adverts with their pictures and (occasional) floorplans and bizzare terminology ("leasehold", "ex local authority", "grade II listed", "sash windows", "charming").
I even called one place to see a flat, but they just said "call back when you're serious."
Time passes, and eventually we decided, ok, we've got enough dosh stashed away, let's get on with it.
We're scientists, so we'll do this logically. We decide the minimum number of rooms we need to properly compartmentalise our lives. We sit down a compute the minimum square meters we can live in. We compute the maximum deposit and mortgage we can afford. In the end we went as far as computing the minimum dimensions of the largest bedroom, including ceiling height. We like the area we live in, so we decide the search pattern will be a growing spiral centred around where we live. If we don't find anything nearby, we up the radius. So the theory went.
Then the search began -- Feb 2009. I tried the internetty approach first -- go online, look at properties, fill in the forms and say "I want to see this". I quickly learned that this has no effect. You need to call the estate agents instead. I try calling them. I manage to get an appointment set up at a fraction of the places I ring. The first place we see in person is this old run down housing estate in Nags Head that was built in 1999. It had two impressively huge bathrooms, and kitchen the size of a laptop (with the screen open, it wasn't tiny). And the building was falling apart, despite being less than ten years old. So, no.
We see a few more without much more luck. No matter what we saw, either me or the wifemonster would put a foot down and say "OMG, no." Eventually, we decide maybe phoning is not the way to go. We should go down to the office and register with them that way. The personal touch may help a bit.
Again. No luck. "Oh, you want to buy a place. Where are you looking? Islington? Oh. Well, let me write your name down on the back of this envelope. I'll call you the moment something interesting comes in. Now let me show you out the door. Oh, take your phone number? Yes, that would help. I'll write it down on the envelope using an invisible pen. Bye."
I was impressed at their complete lack of interest in actually expending any effort in helping people buy things. So the personal touch just confirmed to us that we were doomed.
The first few months go very slowly. We see like one place every 2-3 weeks. All completely forgettable (except this old converted school which had a 70 m2 living room, which I still sometimes wonder if it could have been made to work). The estate agents are no help, so I end up just spending and hour or two at night going through recently posted properties. I tweak a Firefox plugin to annotate keep track of properties I've seen and discounted, so I don't end looking at the same undesirable place over and over. At this point, I can only think in meters, so I write an IE add-on to convert feet to meters and calculate areas. It actually did help speed things up a bit, but it did not help the fact that there was nothing in Islington that appealed to us.
Stay tuned for part two, where holidays and jobs chuck spanners in our direction.
We'd started thinking about buying in 2006, and just dabbled in the idea. Looking at adverts with their pictures and (occasional) floorplans and bizzare terminology ("leasehold", "ex local authority", "grade II listed", "sash windows", "charming").
I even called one place to see a flat, but they just said "call back when you're serious."
Time passes, and eventually we decided, ok, we've got enough dosh stashed away, let's get on with it.
We're scientists, so we'll do this logically. We decide the minimum number of rooms we need to properly compartmentalise our lives. We sit down a compute the minimum square meters we can live in. We compute the maximum deposit and mortgage we can afford. In the end we went as far as computing the minimum dimensions of the largest bedroom, including ceiling height. We like the area we live in, so we decide the search pattern will be a growing spiral centred around where we live. If we don't find anything nearby, we up the radius. So the theory went.
Then the search began -- Feb 2009. I tried the internetty approach first -- go online, look at properties, fill in the forms and say "I want to see this". I quickly learned that this has no effect. You need to call the estate agents instead. I try calling them. I manage to get an appointment set up at a fraction of the places I ring. The first place we see in person is this old run down housing estate in Nags Head that was built in 1999. It had two impressively huge bathrooms, and kitchen the size of a laptop (with the screen open, it wasn't tiny). And the building was falling apart, despite being less than ten years old. So, no.
We see a few more without much more luck. No matter what we saw, either me or the wifemonster would put a foot down and say "OMG, no." Eventually, we decide maybe phoning is not the way to go. We should go down to the office and register with them that way. The personal touch may help a bit.
Again. No luck. "Oh, you want to buy a place. Where are you looking? Islington? Oh. Well, let me write your name down on the back of this envelope. I'll call you the moment something interesting comes in. Now let me show you out the door. Oh, take your phone number? Yes, that would help. I'll write it down on the envelope using an invisible pen. Bye."
I was impressed at their complete lack of interest in actually expending any effort in helping people buy things. So the personal touch just confirmed to us that we were doomed.
The first few months go very slowly. We see like one place every 2-3 weeks. All completely forgettable (except this old converted school which had a 70 m2 living room, which I still sometimes wonder if it could have been made to work). The estate agents are no help, so I end up just spending and hour or two at night going through recently posted properties. I tweak a Firefox plugin to annotate keep track of properties I've seen and discounted, so I don't end looking at the same undesirable place over and over. At this point, I can only think in meters, so I write an IE add-on to convert feet to meters and calculate areas. It actually did help speed things up a bit, but it did not help the fact that there was nothing in Islington that appealed to us.
Stay tuned for part two, where holidays and jobs chuck spanners in our direction.