Househunt continues

[abendgules]

Trotted down to S. London this weekend to look at a place. Wasn't a fraction the size suggested by the external photo, and interior was cramped and dingy.

Robert poked his head into the loft and *could see daylight through the slates*.   This gives you an idea of the calibre of rental house available to two professionals in London.

It's like living in the 19th century. Might as well burn money to heat the house. You'd think it was Grade II listed or something but no. It's just lazy.

Agent was desperate to get a deal, though, and offered to negotiate changes like insulating the roof, installing shelves, buying an outdoor shed. This would be thousands of pounds of work, and if the landlady can't be bothered to insulate it on principle, because that's what civilised people do, catch up FFS, why the heck would she agree to do it for us?

We thought about it, briefly, because we're feeling pressed too, but said no.

Walked to another house which looks very promising, but is just about as far from work as I dare consider commuting. If we take this, I either have to work from a different office, or really and truly find another job. Unfortunately even though it's on several agencies' listings we couldn't find anyone to show it to us. We retreated to a pub to regroup; the nearest one was very hospitable.

Because we've been in one place for several years, through several other peoples' moves, we've inherited A Lot of Stuff(tm) and frankly don't want to move it if we don't have to.  On Sunday we opened the house to guests to paw through our collection of fabric, leather, armour bits, scribal supplies, books, and yarn, in an effort to downsize. The actual haul leaving the house was small but I felt better for having tried to share our resources with the shire.

I'm really, *really* hoping Robert can redistribute his spare armour collection before moving day. We haven't seen the floor of one closet full of armour, shields and weapons, in a year.

Today I'm working from home. I woke up with my shins on fire, like I'd run a marathon uphill - I blame South London, which is clearly risky to my physical health. The length of Tooting high street is on a slope, and we went up and down it 4 times before walking to the second place, then trotting up and down Brixton Hill (clue is in the name) to the Tube.

Now scoping the options on today's search, and further confirming my view the estate agents are minions of evil...misleading descriptions, fisheye lens photos, no floorplans...and they charge you for the privilege of dealing with them. Unbelieveable.

Comments

[jpgsawyer.livejournal.com]

If its any consolation they screw with the folks on the other side too.

Landlords and vendors get dealt a raw deal and then the agents complain that they have such a poor reputation.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

The whole "charging you for the privilege of dealing with them" thing I find excessively annoying. We were lucky that the housing markets in Tilburg and Heidelberg are such we were able to (mostly) avoid them. It just seems like day-light robbery.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

I would greatly like to relieve you of Robert's spare armour, as Dun in Mara has next to no loaner gear, but I can't think of a reasonable way to get it here.

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't really. It's all bits and pieces, left behind, bought on spec, kept 'just in case' someone needs it.

When we visited the fight practice in Ealdormere in Skeldergate (north Toronto)....the site has near unlimited space in a garage, and shelves and shelves of discarded kit. It might take you 15 mins tops to cobble togther a working kit for a newcomer, literally off the shelf. Entire boxes just holding old helms. It was all Robert could do not to walk off with a half-dozen stuffed under his jumper.

[merlyn-gabriel.livejournal.com]

I was shocked when I loved to Germany to discover what the Maklers make. So we, too, have been insanely lucky to get all three of our living spaces in Germany without having to deal with them though we've brushed the market during our searches, even the buying of this house was agent free because we were already living in it and bought it from the landlords. I'm so sorry you are going through this hell, I always thought that home hunting should be a joyful thing not a stressful, horrid thing but these days I guess it's just a big money scam unless you can avoid some of the scamminess.

Do you ever go through private classifieds? Is that even possible? I know here the small local papers always have for rent / sale by owners in them and we also spent a lot of time on Scout.24 not sure if there is a UK equivalent though.

I hope that you find the right place for the right amount, somewhere you can both be happy and call home.
hugs.

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

The small ads were how I found a couple of places in the past. There's an classifieds newspaper here called Loot, and now Loot.com - predates Gumtree and Craigslist.

In the last househunt in 2006, I discovered that creeps were advertising commercial places as if they were private rentals, and gave up that route. We found our current place by me walking into every single agents' office on Bethnal Green Road.

In this country, land of light touch regulation (read: none to speak of, unless what you're doing is blatantly illegal) the so called market rules.

I've yet to find any form of professional association or standards body, where you can find ethical agents or people with any kind of formal professional training to do what they do. It's just a crapshoot.