Flat hunting, part 4
When I left off, things had gone a bit downhill. I was recovering from surgery, we'd just walked away from a flat we found acceptable, and my work situation was less than idea.
It looked like there was no way the Company Which Must Not be Named would let me do the sort of things I'm actually good at, and I'd just be stuck in the role I was shanghaied into. So the desire to move to south London to make things easier job was far less tempting. So, come mid-Feb, the wifemonster and I decided to expand the search. This time we’d look more east and west.
I picked up the search again. I still looked at places in Islington and Battersea, but I also started looking at flats in Hammersmith and Stoke Newington. I threw myself back into the project and got a bit of momentum. Every day after dinner I’d look at all the properties in London that had come on in the past 24 hours. I’d phone people in the morning and I'd spend about 4 days a week looking at flats. Weekends, after work, and in some cases, during lunch.
Some notable places on the search were:
In the first day of my online Stokey property hunt, I found a place which sounded quite nice on paper: 3 bedrooms, a large livingroom and a big terrace, right next to a park (not the park, just a park). We saw it the following weekend and it mostly lived up to the impression. The only downside was the tiny tiny kitchen. Something like 3m2 - really tiny. It was also being let out as four bedrooms. It had potential, though. I went out and bought some new CAD software to mock it up (the package I had didn't handle the floor layout of the place). After a bunch of attempts (and calling the council to find out what they’d allow) we found a layout we liked that really made good use of the space. It required a bit of work, but we could live with it. We made an offer for 15% under the asking price.
After about a week they said no. We were pretty confident that they’d give in eventually. And that no one else would be able to see the actual value in the place (it was a bedsit -- each room had its own fridge. Not may people would want to live in that as a flat). So we waited and saw more places, upping the offer a wee bit at a time. By late April the owners had put the place on 4 different estate agents. Finally, I got a call from our estate agent where they said "you know that last offer they rejected and you said that's it? Is it still on the table?"
They accepted the offer. The place was slightly more ours. And so begun the long drawn out painful processes that house buying is in England.
It looked like there was no way the Company Which Must Not be Named would let me do the sort of things I'm actually good at, and I'd just be stuck in the role I was shanghaied into. So the desire to move to south London to make things easier job was far less tempting. So, come mid-Feb, the wifemonster and I decided to expand the search. This time we’d look more east and west.
I picked up the search again. I still looked at places in Islington and Battersea, but I also started looking at flats in Hammersmith and Stoke Newington. I threw myself back into the project and got a bit of momentum. Every day after dinner I’d look at all the properties in London that had come on in the past 24 hours. I’d phone people in the morning and I'd spend about 4 days a week looking at flats. Weekends, after work, and in some cases, during lunch.
Some notable places on the search were:
- A small flat in a converted school next to Euston. The Flat was about 50-60 m2, but it had sole roof access which was closer to 2 - 3 times that size. Very tempting, but I’d rather store my stuff inside.
- A decent flat near Hammersmith. The traffic outside the place was so bad that the estate agent wasn’t able to meet us there at all. The owner had to show us around. There was no way I’d live in a place with traffic so bad that someone whose job was to know the area couldn’t make it there in time.
- A huge 120 m2 flat near Battersea that used the space so badly that we could just not figure out how we’d manage to fit in the place. It did have closets, though. Good big sized closets. I think it was the 2nd place we’d seen that even had a closet at all. It was on the river too. So those made it slightly tempting, but it apparently took about an hour to get to Hammersmith by public transport. It takes less time to row to Hammersmith. And, to top it off, it was also next to a very loud road. Loud enough that when we left and tried to talk about what we thought, I could barely hear wifemoster and she was right next to me.
In the first day of my online Stokey property hunt, I found a place which sounded quite nice on paper: 3 bedrooms, a large livingroom and a big terrace, right next to a park (not the park, just a park). We saw it the following weekend and it mostly lived up to the impression. The only downside was the tiny tiny kitchen. Something like 3m2 - really tiny. It was also being let out as four bedrooms. It had potential, though. I went out and bought some new CAD software to mock it up (the package I had didn't handle the floor layout of the place). After a bunch of attempts (and calling the council to find out what they’d allow) we found a layout we liked that really made good use of the space. It required a bit of work, but we could live with it. We made an offer for 15% under the asking price.
After about a week they said no. We were pretty confident that they’d give in eventually. And that no one else would be able to see the actual value in the place (it was a bedsit -- each room had its own fridge. Not may people would want to live in that as a flat). So we waited and saw more places, upping the offer a wee bit at a time. By late April the owners had put the place on 4 different estate agents. Finally, I got a call from our estate agent where they said "you know that last offer they rejected and you said that's it? Is it still on the table?"
They accepted the offer. The place was slightly more ours. And so begun the long drawn out painful processes that house buying is in England.