London Real Estate

So finding real estate in London (buy or rent) is pretty much the most retarded process I've ever experienced.

So you'd think it would make sense to sign up with an agent and have them show you places that are within your price range and specifications. That would make sense.

Instead, you pick an area of town that you want to live in, then you have to go sign up with agents in that area. Each agent only has access to show the places that they have listed in that area. So you basically get off of a Tube (subway) station, and there are between 15 and 20 agencies within a 3 block radius. You have to go into each agency and sign up to view properties, and each will have 1-2 flats that are within what you want.

So for us, we scoped out a few areas of town and decided on about 4 that we liked. These 4 areas compromised less than 25 sq. miles total, so basically the size of a suburban middle school district. Within that area there are a lot of places available, but they are spread out over about 50 different agents, all of which we had to sign up with in order to see apartments. It is really about the most stressful and annoying process imaginable.

Luckily, Jenna was able to do a lot of it while I was working, and she actually found a place in our #1 area. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you're moving to London and need a place, make sure your spouse has time to look so you don't have to deal with it.

From Jenna:

So anyway, it wasn't that stressful to me. We only started looking at places on Saturday with several different agents, we found one that we really liked, made an offer and then found out Monday morning that another offer had been made on the same place, bummer!

Sunday we went and looked at a few places, nothing that we loved.

Then today I went and looked at 7 different flats. 6 out of 7 were rubbish, mostly too small, in the wrong area or really old and nasty. The last place was in a cute bldg., in a nice area, where we wanted to be. It was totally refurbished on the inside with lots of storage/closet space (for London). It even has a washer and a dryer. I fell in LOVE! So I put a down payment down without Aaron seeing it or even knowing that I found something. (The reason I did not tell him was that he doesn't have a cell phone yet and there was no way for me to get a hold of him.)

We are pretty excited that we found place that we like! Aaron will get to see it tomorrow night.

We hope you are all doing well and we will be moving in 2 weeks so we have someplace for you all to stay when you visit!

And here are a few pictures of the place (added after the original post), to let you see where we'll be living - 71 Grayshott Rd, SW11 5UB!