The 'grown up' series: Finding an affordable home

Hello Everyone!
Happy Monday :) This is the first installment of the 'grown up' series and I'm going to write about making the transition from student to 'grown up'/ moving out of your parents into your first flat/ whatever circumstances you're in that mean you're finding your first rental property (lets face it, I'm only 21 - its not mortgage time for me yet!)


if you've been following my blog for a while you'll know that at the end of June my housemate and supposed 'best friend' did a runner from the student house we shared together and left me and Stew homeless. We had seven days to find somewhere to live, and absolutely no money.

We started off looking here. Great website, lots of choice but almost everything was unfurnished and those that were furnished were horribly expensive.. After trawling numerous websites for hours and hours, phoning letting agents, leaving messages, sending countless emails and in my case, crying a lot... Someone suggested we look on Gumtree.

I'm going to admit straight away, I was all "gumtree? isn't that really dodgy and gross and just generally sketchy"

I couldn't have been more wrong, within 10 minutes I had shortlisted 5 gorgeous flats and dwindled them down to a potential two. One was in the centre of the city, unfurnished and affordable. The other was 10 miles or so out of the city, part furnished and seemed too-good-to-be-true. We viewed it and met our landlord and landlady who were lovely, gave us lots of information and 'proved' to us that you can indeed find trustworthy landlords on Gumtree.

Here is a link to a flat tour video!

Our flat came part furnished which would normally just mean a bed and a sofa but actually we got EVERYTHING apart from a bed, a desk, and a TV unit. Amazing.




So there's my story! Here's my top tips for looking for an affordable home/flat to rent:

• Shop around - although we only had 7 days we must have looked at over a hundred potential flats online and viewed two as we were being a bit picky really! Make sure you know what things you absolutely will not compromise on. For us, it was car parking and secure entry. Our flat came with the added bonus of an en-suite bathroom, office/study and beautiful french doors in the living room.
• Make a ticklist and use this when you view properties. Important things to look for are is this front door secure? is the property clean and tidy? (if not, leave immediately, if the landlord hasn't cleaned it then the list of other things they won't have done will be as long as your arm). Is there any damp anywhere? - this is MAJOR with rental properties and people will do everything they can to hide it. Do NOT be shy about moving furniture, asking to see behind the bed/sofa, and inspecting the bathrooms carefully, damp is a real health hazard. Are there aerial points for the televison? Are you allowed pets? How much is the deposit? What is the council tax band? Are there any 'hidden costs' such as communal cleaning costs or gardening costs? (these are common in 'blocks' of flats). Why is the landlord renting it out? Is there enough storage? Does it come with 'white goods' (washing machine, dishwasher etc)? Is there car parking? Is there an alarm? As you can see, your ticklist will probably end up being a few pages long but remember a good and trustworthy landlord will be happy to be interrogated. 
• Think about furniture - yes, your mega king size 4 poster bed is beautiful, but will it fit in the bedroom? Yes, the flat you're looking at is huge, but as a just-ex-student can you afford to furnish it well? Is the landlord providing anything for you such as a sofa? It's often good to ask "if that sofa isn't going to stay here, could we buy it off you instead?" - lots of landlords just throw old furniture away, if you can score a sofa for £50 to save the landlord the hassle then its a win win situation! 
• What are the neighbours/upstairs/downstairs like. It's all good and well living in a gorgeous flat, but if you have a party loving druggy living above you, or a mum with 5 kids next door you will probably be getting disturbed quite a lot. Again, don't be shy to ask the landlord who lives there - be a bit cautious if they don't know - it's in their interests to know who lives around the property they're trying to rent out! 
• Be cheeky! Blagging £20 a month off of your rent will save you £240 a year! You can be particularly cheeky when the landlord is in a rush too...
• Look for a property that is slightly under your budget (e.g. £400 a month when you have £500 a month to spend). You'll be amazed at how nice the 'cheaper' flats are and it saves you £1,200 - money you can save or invest into furniture/bills/the dreaded council tax! 
• Find out what you need to do before/during/after the move. Which bill companies do you have to register with? Do you need to go and introduce yourself to the security people? When can you have your keys? 
• BE LOGICAL AND SENSIBLE! Don't rent a shitty flat with a balcony, just because you want a balcony. Don't jump in and 'shake hands' on the first flat you see because it has a 'nice fireplace' or 'lots of cupboards'. Be patient and traipse around 30 flats if you have to. It's sods law that the last one you see will be the perfect one for you. 
• Remember - there is always another option. Never let a landlord make you feel like you 'have' to rent somewhere. They'll pull at your heartstrings and make a bedsit out to be a mansion. Be savvy, be tough and be real. They have a motive - they want to make money. As I said before, a good landlord will let you ask a million questions (and answer them all well!), will show you absolutely everything and won't care if you ask him/her to move the bed 'so you can see what yours will look like' haha! 

I could quite literally write about this for weeks - I feel like I learnt so much in the 7 days that we were hunting!

Remember - I'll be writing about things like council tax, home insurance, furniture and pet insurance later on in the series which is why I haven't gone into much detail in this post!

If you have ANY questions about finding an affordable but gorgeous property to rent, please do not hesitate to email me at cat.west[at]hotmail.co.uk. I'll be more than happy to answer your questions no matter how big or small!

xo

ps - I hope this was Ok for the first installment! ♥

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