Having successfully navigated airports, customs, collecting my biometric residence permit, and all the other bureaucratic details of obtaining legal entry status into the UK, I must now find a place to live.
This, my friends, is proving difficult.
Flat-hunting in the UK is very different from flat-hunting in the USA. Unlike in the D.C. area, where I could hop on Craigslist or Padmapper, in the UK there are essentially two sites everyone uses: RightMove and Zoopla. Nearly every single flat up for rent is listed on these sites, and these sites are not Craigslist equivalents: each flat listed is connected to a letting company. After I see a flat online that peaks my interest, I send a little query to the letting company, and usually within a day (sometimes hours!), I receive an email and/or phone call from an agent asking me when I’d like to the view the flat.
Well, ideally that’s what they ask. About 70% of the time, they tell me that the flat I’ve enquired about has an offer on it, or has already been let, but look here! They have another that might fit my criteria. Spoiler: their “anothers” almost never fit my criteria.
Another difference is in the marketing. Everything always looks so good and so cheap online. They love to price things by the week, so when I look at a place I love I think, “Wow, only £385! How is this so suspiciously inexpensive?!” It’s not. That’s the one thing that’s the same as D.C. – everything is ridiculously expensive.
Once you’ve found a place deemed worthy, you don’t just say, “Great, I’ll take it!” or even put in an application, like you would in the USA. No, no. Instead, you put in an offer. It feels like buying a house. You specify what you would actually pay in rent, and you don’t have to pay asking price. Of course, the landlord doesn’t have to accept the offer, but many letting agents have hinted to me that certain flats would go for under asking. You can specify conditions – such as, “I’d like a new mattress when I move in,” if the place is furnished. You can haggle over tenancy fees, and cleaning fees, and anything else you want to negotiate.
After two weeks, upwards of twenty viewings, and multiple tube trips, I’ve finally found a place to put an offer on. If my offer is rejected, well, then back to the drawing board. If you find a clean, well-maintained flat near a tube station on the District or Central lines, within reasonable walking distance of a grocery store, on a somewhat quiet street, with a gas hob and a fridge bigger than the one I had in my college dorm room, please do let me know.
(The outside of a flat that I viewed last week. All these terrace houses look gorgeous on the outside, but they can be very hit or miss on the inside. Photographed by me, but not with any real finesse.)