As much a dialogue, as it is a Shlogg !
I've been living in a (private) rental apartment for 15 months. If I had the choice, I probably wouldn't be moving, not just yet anyway ...
It's not that I'm in love with the place, or my way of life for the last 15 months (although I find I do like being a city boy!), it's just that change leads to effort, effort leads to cost, costs leads to hate, and hate leads to the ... oh, wait.
I certainly don't hate where I am, and it's probably way too easy to stay - but the choice has been made for me. My landlord is moving away from the area and whilst there's the possibility I could continue to rent the place from the new custodians ... a possibility isn't enough to hang your hat on. Especially when it comes to your home. I'm happy to play it chilled and all 'back-of-the bus', but I kinda like to know where I'm gonna live next week.
So, a move it is. It could easily have been a really irksome task, but there's a silver lining. My other half and I have decided to get a place 'together'.
Win.
Yes the timing thing helps. I'm out of my first year and onto a rolling monthly basis, and my other half has her rental contract up at the end of June. But the truth is, if I was still under a binding contract I'd be looking for a way to buy myself out of it - given the offer on the table ;-)
Anyway, enough of the slushy stuff. How many of you have been apartment hunting recently? I'm not talking about buying a property, I know that's a whole different deal complete with it's own patented style of stress and problems, I'm talking about renting.
I'm talking about the blink-and-it's-already-gone side of the market!
We started looking a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed like it would be simple enough. These days all the rental companies are online. There are even aggregators (rightmove.co.uk) to make things even easier for you. "This will be just another form of online shopping!", I foolishly said to myself.
It's not.
Every apartment you find online, that you actually like, has already gone. They go so fast that they don't even bother to update the listings. I couldn't work out how people moved so fast. Brand new listing, phone the agent "sorry, it's gone". HOW! How do people get to them before they're even listed? After a week or two, the penny dropped.
You see, everytime you call an agent about another (already let) property. They get your details. After two or three fruitless calls about yet more properties they no longer have, the agents know you name, your numbers, what kind of property you're looking, what areas interest you, hell they even recognised my voice by week three. And what all this means is, the moment they get a property that matches, they call you. Now, in week four, we are viewing properties that aren't even listed. I'm pretty sure that I just left a viewing that the incumbent resident didn't even know she was leaving yet (she was still there, doing her washing and charging her laptop up).
As it happens, we didn't want this particular one. But we do have three more viewings this week for properties with no listings yet. I reckon that the third one may well be a keeper. So apologies to all those who've started looking at rental in my area. We now have the tips on all the top places before the Internet knows about them, and the best one, the one you've been waiting for, the one you've been praying would come up this month?
It's already mine.
:-P
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