House hunting woes

The last few days, the site that I have been haunting is rightmove.co.uk. I almost send a silent prayer everytime I refresh the page.

You see, we are house-hunting. The landlord of the house we are staying at, had put his house on sale.  We had been quite sure that the house would not get sold all that soon, given the economy and everything. The agent had also assured us that sales do tend to take their time.  But then, little did we know that that’s not how it works when we are the tenants.  In our case, the house got sold almost immediately. I should have heeded husband’s advice of keeping the house shoddy and turning off prospective buyers 🙂

Anyways, since I did not (listen to worthy advice, ie), it is up to me to find us a home before we get kicked out. Not that I mind – I happen to love looking at houses. Husband claims that it is my ‘hobby’ looking at houses, their floor plans, the decor and stuff like that.Then again, looking in desperation is not fun at all.

I had started the search in the area that we live. It is a really nice residential area with plenty of green space and a lovely playground, with great schools nearby and Poohi has friends nearby – all reasons to stay as close to where we are. Fate, however has other plans – not a single house up for rent anywhere nearby.

So in vain I widen my search in a desperate attempt to find a suitable house. The houses I find , I can’t even begin to describe. Some houses look like they have never seen a vacuum cleaner in their lives, some have cubby holes for rooms. One house, I was not even able to view, the tenant went missing when we landed there. I was not really upset, the outside was scary enough for me.

You see, I have this strict methodology that I follow while looking for houses.

1. No show, no go – No picture in the advertisement, I will not take a second look at the property. I have realised after years of house hunting that if they have not posted pictures, there is a reason for it.

2. Get the postcode and check the surrounding area. Some times the most beautiful houses are in really seedy areas – and I don’t want my daughter playing with children with vocabulary  sprinkled with colourful words, Thank you very much.

3. The schools that we have applied for Poohi for next year are close by.

4. Any house that has been on the market for more than 2 weeks – no point looking at it.

Apart from all this of course, the size and parking etc, etc matters. Now after all this filtering, how do I still end up at houses which look marvellous in the pictures only to look like vandalised houses in reality? The pictures were a decade old !

Or better still the grass in the garden is so overgrown that there might be wildlife in there.

Grass that looks cleaner than the carpets inside.

Rooms which make my cubicle at work look spacious.

Storage space? What’s that again ?

How can there be houses without a washer-dryer in this part of the world where it rains most of the time?

One real estate agent actually told me to try to imagine the house without the dirt!

The ultimate disappointment was this morning, when I actually managed to find a house which looked perfect – at least in the pics, had everything we wanted, but apparently the tenants decided not to move out. I have a feeling that they checked the market and decided to stay put. Back to square one. Back to praying and refreshing and hoping against hope that I will find my perfect house, before we get homeless.