The Home-Hunt

Ok! Today's mission: Find me a home! I was targeting the Birmingham area, so Dear Hubby and I had made a few appointments for viewings of flats to rent in the area. Goals: Walking distance to the train station so I can hop the train to London easily for the weekend, easy access to motorways going north/west to get to work, and ideally a parking space for my Meow-Mobile. First flat: A promising location, the ad boasted being by a canal, having a parking space, and being centrally located. As we wander around the building to find the entrance, we walk by the canal, ok, nice, this could be good, I could go for runs by the canal, that would be lovely. We meet with the landlord, a pleasant, professional, trustworthy seeming fellow. He tells us that the place has been newly refurbished, good, good, even though we haven't seen pictures of it yet. So we enter, and... it's tiny. Nice closet space in the bedroom, but looking at the kitchen, I think to myself "Do they know just *how* much cookware I've shipped over to stock these cabinets with?!" (Nevermind where I'd put all my food/ingredients...?....). And a fridge that he indicates will be put underneath the kitchen counter. So um... a fridge that's about half the size I'm used to - I had a bigger fridge in my college dorm! "Well", I say to self, "You've always wanted to live in a 'city', so... yeah! This is what you get!". We say thank you's and farewells, and continue on, still holding higher hopes for flats 2, 3, and 4.
We drive to meeting point #2, park, and wait for the realtor who tells us he's running late. We park the Meow-Mobile, and quickly realize, as Asian person after Asian person pass, point in delight, and chatter to eachother about my car, that I could very well become the most popular kid in the neighborhood. We wait... and wait... and wait... and eventually an older guy and younger woman, who could be his assistant, arrive and park in front of us, in a car as described our realtor #2 would be in. I look at them, kind of questioningly and smiling through the windshield, wave at them. They get out of their car and walk on by. Uh... oops, heh, that wasn't them. Some other guy soon pulls up along the road, after them, and turns out to be our actual realtor. So what we know so far about this place is 1) the assistant who didn't sound too on top of things wasn't sure if parking could be arranged (as it definitely did not come with the rental), 2) the realtor was running late... hmm... not very professional... He leads us to the apartment complex, ok, no so bad, it's a nice area, clean, bright enough looking, cheerful, in an Asian section of town with an Asian market just out the door - great for cooking needs! The guy finds the correct entry door and pokes at some buttons on the entrance security panel, pulls the door handle - nothing. Pokes at more buttons, fiddles with the handle some more. Nothing. He calls somebody to ask what the code is, again, and what's the procedure to open the door, attempts again, klunk, the door is still locked. At this point it's getting kind of awkward and we're wondering if we can even trust this guy to rent us a place, and consider giving up now. But then he presses the buzzer, a woman answers, and he explains who he is and that he has people to view the apartment. She lets him in. Ok, no big deal, sure, sometimes they have viewings for a place before the tenant has actually moved out, fine. We get up to the floor, knock on the door, and a petite woman in a bathrobe answers the door and explains that she'd been sleeping. We're escorted in to see the place, it looks decent, clean, modern, surely larger than the first place. Realtor gestures to the bathroom, I grab the handle to open the door, and it comes off in my hand! Heh... oops... greeeat. Ok, still a nice looking place. Realtor explains to us that they're still looking for a new flat for the tenant, but they're hoping to have her out in a week or two, at least within the month. Uh... that doesn't really work, as I'm starting work on the 12th and need a home, or at least a definite promise of one. We look at the place, at least the kitchen is decent sized... peek in her bedroom and see a collection of ten to fifteen cheap mobile phones scattered on her bed and a copy of a book next to them. "Fifty Shades of Grey", she explains, "Have you read it? Yeah, I was just in bed reading that...". With your collection of phones? Kind of odd... All in all it was a really nice place in a really nice area, but it just seemed unreliable, at best, to not be guaranteed an actual date of when I could move in. Why is it the realtor's responsibility to find the tenant a new home? And when we asked the tenant about living in the place, her selling points were that it was warm and it was safe - she lived alone and felt totally ok with it. We explained to the realtor that we were looking for something in the center or at least the northwest area of the city, so I could get to work easily, and still be able to get to the city center. He looks thoughtful for a moment and says "Oh, I do have one! It's *very* spacious, two bedroom, I can check on the price. It's right above our office, you can come over and see it!". He calls "headquarters" to verify the price of it, and reports back to us that it's only 450GPB per month, and with free parking in the area! (Other places we looked at were in the 600-700 range). Street-smart Hubby asks "And just how far from the center of town is it, being that price?". "Oh, heh heh, a 10 minute drive, there's a tram station near by...". Well, by this point we're already running late for our next viewing, but promise to call this guy after to meet up to see this place because who knows, it could be *ok*...
We scramble to meet realtor #3, in the more southeast corner of the city. We know nothing about the city. We drive and drive and the neighborhoods become more populated with disheveled, crumbling buildings, more and more graffiti... ehh... We meet the girl to show us this place, walk down some stained carpets, take a ride up in the carpeted lift, also stained, and enter the flat. Not particularly impressive. It was advertised as having a balcony. The "balcony" is some maybe one foot by four foot ledge that's blocked off by some railing, just right outside the bedroom door. Can't even put a chair out there. In the bedroom there's a kind of cruddy looking bed and a deflated air mattress in the corner. "Furnished". Mmmm... this is an easy "no thanks". Dingy flat in a dodgy neighborhood. Ok, so there's one more viewing coming up at the end of the day, but first we decide to drive to see this previous guy "spacious" flat, above their office. Drive and drive, traffic, stoplights, driving up into what seems to be Little India, many stores with some quite beautiful looking saris in the windows. Ok, GPS says we've finally arrived. Um... really? Is this it? The address is right. Upstairs in this building... this building that has a sign indicating that the first floor is a home for "Learning Disabilities, Physical Disabilities, Elderly, Challenging Behaviour, Epilepsy, Autism". You've got to be kidding me. There is also a sign indicating that it is the correct building for the real estate agency. We call our realtor #2, he says he's not in the area, but his assistant is in the office and can show us the flat. She meets us downstairs and explains that she doesn't have the key to the flat, but she can show us pictures. Ok, fine. We follow her up the stairs to the office, and we talk about how we really liked the previous flat, but why is the woman there looking to move out? Realtor assistant says she doesn't really know why he wants to move out and that the real estate agents are trying to find a new place for them. "Him"? "Them"? As far as we saw, it was only one woman there. Weird... We don't really get an answer other than "Oh, I don't know, some people just like change, you know?". So she pulls up pictures of this "spacious" flat, and yeah, it's spacious, all right - it's an attic! A finished attic! Triangular, low ceilings. An attic above a group home in some creepy remote section of town? Great big NO.
At this point things start to look bleak... But alas, there was still flat #4.
We make our way to this part of town, the classy sounding Jewellery Quarter, with supposedly a good reputation. Meet the agent in his office, right across the way from the actual rental property. Decent seeming young fellow. He shows us to the place, nice, clean, modern, with a tenant guaranteed to move out by a certain date (good!) and a secure allocated parking space with the flat. I first see the bathroom - now that's a bathroom! Twice the size of any of the other bathrooms we'd seen! A nice little living room/kitchen off to one side of the main hallway, with a balcony! A proper balcony! That you could actually put tables and chairs and friends on! And that is one of the *two* balconies, the other being outside of the ample sized and nicely-furnished bedroom. Dear Hubby nudges me from behind and grins as this perfectly acceptable, no, wonderful place is being shown to us. We thank the guy and tell him we might need a few minutes to think about it and explore the area further. Sure, of course, he tells us. We start to wander on down the road and then pause to wonder what we're even questioning. We swiftly move back towards the office, pop in the door and say yes, we want!