Guide to rent your first Flat/House :: Where to look , how to search, booking viewings, how to avoid wasting your time with bad properties.

Me and my girlfriend have been together for close to 1 year and are looking to move into our own flat. She currently lives 5-ish miles away in south-west London and I’m in South-East. This will take me around 40 minutes on my bike. I’m usually the one to do the distance since I like cycling and her pad is much nicer than mine (man cave 3.0).

1. WHERE TO LOOK

There are 2 ways (probably more than 2 but these are the usuals) to start your search for your ideal flat or house:

a. Check the online estate agents
b. Visit one of the brick and mortar agents

a. Online estate agents with presence only on the internet. They tend to have low fees and will usually advertise on the big search engines such as Zoopla, Rightmove, Gumtree and co. The one that seems to become popular in the UK is Openrent.co.uk but there are others popping up such as:

Easyproperty
Emoov
Hatched
House Simple
House Network
Purplebricks
Tepilo
Yopa
Thehouseshop
Upad
Iamtheagent

b. Brick and mortar estate agents with their own physical, high street offices. They will also have developed their own website and mobile app where they will advertise and alert you of any existing/ new properties.

They will also advertise on the big search engines Zoopla, Rightmove, Openrent etc. Their fees are usually high but they tend to amass a wider range of properties of high quality and standard which are hard to find on the online only agents.

I am not sure why (probably lack of awareness) but this was the case when we searched for our current flat.

One of the big advantages of brick and mortars is that they could inform you of new properties on the market straight away even before they will list it online so it is worth keeping in touch with a few just in case you come across a gem that is well worth the fees.

As it were, we started looking for properties, scanning the usual suspects: rightmove, zoopla, gumtree, openrent, spare room etc. Depending on how your budget is set, you can either request property viewings and arrange tenancy agreement via an estate agent or deal with private landlords directly, which is what we have done.

Why private landlords you ask ? Well because I cannot comprehend why someone would want to pay administration fees, referencing fees, checkin fees, contract renewal fees, checkout fees, inventory fees and I’m sure there are other fees there that i haven’t heard of. You could easily run into thousands just in fees so a big Fukc you goes out to the estate agency which are not providing much value in return.

1. THE SEARCH

Once you have established which works better for you it’s time to start the searching. I highly suggest you make good use of the filters available so that you can weed out the unwanted properties.

Set yourself a budget and stick to it! It’s important to do so as there will be other expenses that you will have to cover and no-one wants to eat potatoes with ketchup for a month or a year.

Here is a list of questions that you should have an answer for. These will help you find the perfect property without having to compromise.

How big the property needs to be ?

Do you work from home? Is your mother in law visiting twice a month ? Maybe a spare bedroom would be handy to turn it into a study/cellar.

Do you cycle ? Make sure you have a safe space where you can store your bike.

How tall are you ? Don’t go for flats set on the last floor with slanted roofs. Even if they look good and the landlord has done an amazing job you will struggle if you don’t pay attention.

Is there a lift ? How are you going to move in if the flat is on the 3rd floor on a property with no lift ? Are you ok going up and down at least 3 times a day ?

Are you well known in your social circle for throwing the best outdoors parties ? Has your girlfriend repeatedly told you that she loves growing flowers? Maybe a large garden is a must in your case.

Have you been a hoarder your entire life ? Ample storage space will save your arse!

Do you hate eating on the sofa ? Then make sure you have enough space for a dinner table.

List can go on and on but do make a list with top 10 things you believe are important for you. Ask the other people moving in to write a similar one. Then drop down to 5 absolute must if you can’t afford to have them all.

Just to give you an example, for me and my girlfriend was important to be close to work. So we chose an area where we can commute from in 35 min. We didn’t waste time on anything else , although the temptation was BIG! Because we work from home few days a week an extra bedroom was a must. You can’t work from bed and if one wants to watch the telly in the living room a second bedroom is god-sent. We didn’t care much about parking space or garden but I made sure that there is space for my bicycles.

We also had a budget in mind that we never crossed although again the temptation was huge!!!

Now with this in mind start shorting the properties that you think are worth viewing.

**** i am going to finish off this post tomorrow as it is 1.30 am and have a customer call for 5 am***