Eric and I put in an offer on our third flat tonight. It's not *exactly* perfect but we agreed that we could live there for two years. I am so hopeful that this is it... SO hopeful.
The process of looking for a rental property in London has been harder than I imagined. We were certainly warned, but after a two or three month search for our Chicago condo a few years ago, I thought "how hard could it be?!" Well, I was wrong! And now I wish I had listened a bit more... But actually, I don't know what we would or could have done differently. We loved our vacation trips and would still would have taken them. I know we worked really hard on the day that estate agent took us around - we saw more than a dozen properties that day, running from one to another while working around little Brooks' needs. Perhaps we would have made better offers on the first places we liked? I'm not so sure, as they both had some issues.
All in all, I think this place has many of things we are looking for... There are a few problems (grungy stained carpet, a tiny college dorm fridge, a single unit washer/dryer rather than a separate dryer, etc) but even those can be worked around, I think (ie, a few well placed rugs and a trip to the grocery store for milk every other day)... Maybe the delay in finding our home has done this - it's helped me become more flexible and willing to make changes necessary to adapt to living in our new city. And it's made us move more decisively once we found a place that COULD work.
You know it's funny, last night we went by the listing agent's offer to confirm our offer and drop off our reference forms (five pages of forms to assure them that we could afford to pay our rent on time, even though they require a ten week - yep, 10 week! - deposit to secure the lease). While we were there, the listing agent mentioned that the place has been on the market two weeks and should have rented before now. Apparently the desired rent for this amount of space in this location is fairly reasonable, but it's clear that the vacating tenants don't want to be very helpful to the landlord before they move out. It's currently being rented by two bachelors who hadn't cleaned in weeks. But they apparently do quite a lot of laundry - shorts and socks and shirts were draped ALL OVER the flat, air drying... Very, very funny. But it gave me ideas about how well the washer/dryer combo unit must work! :) And even better, if this is the reason that the place hasn't rented yet, then HURRAY for messy tenants. We just had to use our imagination to clear out their things and imagine our happy little family making it more cozy and warm.
I haven't told you all the great bits about it ... perhaps I'm still holding off on getting attached to this flat, as I did the other two. We know they have two more showings today. If you're a person who prays, please pray with us that the landlord accepts our offer (today, so we're not anxious about it over the weekend!) and that he'll agree to replace the carpets for us. He currently lives in Dubai and I'm praying that he's both reachable and reasonable.
Hopefully, we'll know something by the end of the business day.
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