I think today I’d like to just rant a little about the sheer chaos of renting a place.

So here in the UK, it’s kind of unusual to plan to rent somewhere far in advance. Things become available very less minute.

This is not stressful at all.

So my boyfriend and I went to look for a place last week, roughly a month before we wanted to move. We are looking at a commuter town because it is much cheaper – roughly an hour outside London and probably like 90 or so minutes from the train station there to the station near my school.

So we lined up 5 viewings when we went up on a Saturday. The first one was wild.

An entire small house for £1100 a month. We walked over to it and marvelled that we could easily afford this when we couldn’t even afford a decent one bedroom in London.

Then we saw the place. It was listed as fully furnished. The realtor then said, “Yes, there is a futon upstairs.”

And we said… “What?”

She replied, “There is a refrigerator.”

We went… “I don’t think we’re on the same page here.”

Then she said, “There is a third room. It always stays locked. You can’t go in. Sometimes the landlord will come get stuff out of it.”

And we went… ah, yes, this is how we can afford a house. The house of a madman. What’s in that room? Drugs? Bodies? The landlord himself living like a mole person?

From there, we went to see the next place. This place was very modern. Crazy high tech appliances. Though the realtor seemed to have no actual information about the place. There were two cats in there presently. We said, “oh, we could get a dog.”

“No animals allowed,” said the realtor.

…yes. Because these cats are not animals.

And we asked, “This is fully furnished, yes?”

“LOLz, no” replied the realtor. Sort of. I mean, he was a 60-something year old man, but that captures the gist.

Then we went to see another apartment, the only that fully claimed it was unfurnished from the get-go.

And yes, it was. It was fine. Nothing exciting. Right in city centre. We were not excited about the prospect of buying a ton of furniture.

We killed some time until the next appointment and walked through some furniture stores and charity shops, trying to figure out how much we would have to spend to furnish a place.

The next place was this massive flat in city centre, in the building that had first drawn us to the city months ago, and we were supposed to see two flats. The realtor could not figure out how to get in the building. And once we all finally got in, we went up to the flat and my boyfriend goes, “This is not the flat from the listing.”

The sort of air-headish realtor went, “Oh, no, of course not. We can’t go in most of the flat. But this flat is available.”

And we went, “But we liked the other flats. Also, can we go to the second flat we talked about.”

“No.”

Okay…. “Is this flat furnished?”

“No. But one of the ones you can’t go in today is furnished.”

Okay… at this point in the day, boyfriend is still leaning towards this building, though I am leaning toward unfurnished cat place where we can’t have cats but the current tenant can for some reason.

So boyfriend goes, “You sent us a video walkthrough of the flat once, can you send us a new video once the construction in there is done.”

AH (air head) Realtor goes, “I can let you know when it’s done and you can come back for a viewing.”

Boyfriend goes, “No, we just want a video.”

AH goes, “We can schedule it right now. What day do you want to come back?”

“We live in London. Coming here for a viewing on another day isn’t really an option. Can you send a video?”

“Oh, it’s ok if just one of you wants to come back. I can come show you later in the evening, if that works too.”

“We just want a video.”

“Anytime after the 30^th June is great.”

….

…

.

So we left.

It had been a strange day. Most stories of furnishings were a lie. We headed over to our last choice. It was a 20 minute bus ride outside of the city centre. We added it kind of last minute, as a whim, and heading into the city that day, it was our last choice.

We got off the bus, walked past a gigantic Lidl. Down Sugar Ave. Across Candy Way. To a lovely little townhouse.

The realtor went, “I know it says partially furnished. We can get all of this out of here for you if you want. It was just that an old lady went into a home. She lived here for like 15 years.”

We went, “You could leave all the furniture, if you want. That would be great.”

The realtor went, “Oh, the landlord would probably love that.”

We went, “Can we get a dog?”

The realtor went, “Well… no. But in 6 months if there are no issues, we can ask the landlord about it and try to get him to agree to it once he knows you guys are good tenants.”

We thought… is this man actually listening to us? Is he coherently answering our questions?

He said, “Would you like to see the garage? You can use it for storage. Have you seen the garden?”

And we walked away from that property back towards the city centre, very excited about potentially renting the town house, deep in the suburbs, near a Lidl and a Domino’s and a brief bus ride to lovely little city centre.

Our application was just approved and we move in mid-July. July is going to be a wild month of travel, friends visiting and moving, but I’m very excited for lower bills overall, way more space, and moving in with the boyfriend.

And, hopefully, no more realtors for a while.