*TIPS FROM A TOP RENT GIRL* (Renting a Home)

Member Name: hellyphant

Product:	Renting a Home
Date:	14/03/02 (1335 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: There ARE nice cheap places out there

Disadvantages: hard work, dodgy landlords, and riddicolous expenses

Finding a half decent place to rent in London can be a complete nightmare. Especially if you're like me and don't exactly have a bulging wage packet. I'm quite fussy about where I live. My home is very important to me, because I'm not the clubbing or pubbing type. I'm more of a shut the curtains, put the fire on and snuggle up on the sofa with kitten and boyfriend kind of girl. Ok, so I'm boring, but I am getting on a bit now. 25 is pretty old, and my legs aren't what they used to be?? Anyway, I must stop with the digressing.

Buying a house is probably cheaper than renting, in the long run, especially if you're going to be renting for several years. It's not always an option though. Mortgages aren't exactly cheap, and banks don't automatically give you a loan. I was told that both my boyfriend and myself would have to be in a good, steady, and fairly well paid job for a minimum of 2 years before they would even consider giving us a penny. Since I was a temp at the time, we didn't stand a chance. I also didn?t feel ready for to settle down with a mortgage and a house when I was just fresh out of uni and only been with my boyfriend a few months. So, renting it was.

If you are brave enough to face the nightmare that is renting hell, herein follows my tips to top renting.

**********Where to start looking***********

I would advise everyone to make their first port of call that good old London newspaper, Loot, which consists entirely of adverts. You will find it in most good newsagents and its bright yellow (and sometimes green, I noticed today) pages are hard to miss. Loot is great, flick through the pages and you'll see. Trust me when I tell you, you can find EVERYTHING you could possibly want in Loot, however bizarre, from a chinchilla to a second hand drum kit. Loot isn't that cheap, for a paper that is - £1.40 - but if you're sneaky like me, go to a large newsagents,
eg WHSmiths, take a pen and just read and quickly jot down details in the shop. I've yet to be caught, but then I am small and disappear quite easily in a crowd ; ) Alternatively, you could always go to your local library. They often have a copy of Loot there. Although I should point out that it is very popular and most likely someone else will have got there before you. Grrrrrrrr!

Loot is separated into different sections. For example, there are pages that advertise pets, others that advertise jobs, electrical goods, sports equipment, and of course, most importantly for you, there is the accommodation and property section, which consists of houses, flats and rooms to rent. Accommodation is advertised every day in Loot and you will always find pages and pages full of advers, apart from on Sundays (if I remember correctly) when Loot doesn't come out.

When you have your paper in front of you, open at the accommodation and properties section, you will notice that the adverts are very helpfully split into various price ranges. They generally start with the cheapest - e.g. under £100 per week and gradually work up to the luxury apartments that I can only dream about living in, where you can quite easily fork out a hefty £500/600 per week.

I always started with the cheapest. Don't immediately assume cheap is going to be nasty. It usually is, but not always. You can be lucky sometimes - like I was in the end (but I'll come to that later!)

You will find that most adverts give a brief description of the flat or house. A common example is something like:

"Lovely airy 1 bedroom flat, open plan kitchen, bathroom, access to shared garden. Kentish Town, near tube. £200 pw."

A telephone number will follow and it will usually either be that of a private landlord, or a letting agency. Now, out of these two, which do I think is the best option to go for? Lets see?

*********The private landlord*
********

Being a landlord must be one of the best, quickest, and easiest ways of making fast money. My friend's ex boyfriend rents out 3 student houses in Lancaster and he is totally loaded. He just sits on his backside playing computer games all day and waits for the money to come in every month. Sickening.

You do have to be careful with landlords though. I had a landlady when I was at uni. She had her own key to our house and quite often if she was passing during the day and we were out, she would let herself in for a cup of tea. We'd come home from our lectures and find her cup by the sink for us to wash up. The cheek! And then there was the time one Sunday morning when she decided she felt like doing a spot of gardening. I opened the curtains and there she was, sleeves rolled up, gardening gloves on, briskly mowing our lawn as though she had every right to be there.

That was student accommodation though. Maybe slightly different. The first place my boyfriend and I rented was a studio flat and we found it though a private landlord who had advertised in Loot. He was a fat, very rich grandfatherly type and we didn't really have any problems with him. We paid our rent and he left us alone. You should never get on the wrong side of a landlord though. Always, always make sure you pay your rent and you pay it on time. I was terrified after hearing so many horror stories about landlords and their tenants, that I made 100% we were the perfect tenants.

I have found however, that landlords do tend to ignore you when you have a problem. We had a dripping tap in our bathroom and a light that didn't work the whole time we lived in our studio flat. The number of times we contacted the landlord to ask him to sort it out and the number of times he said yes I'll look into it, well I lost count. If you ever have this experience, keep badgering him. Tell him, if he doesn't sort it out, then he should consider lowering y
our rent. You never know, it might work!

When you go to view the property, you should have a chance to meet your landlord. And please, even if you love the property, if you don't like your landlord, if he?s a creepy, dirty old pervert, or just looks like someone you can't trust, I would 100% advise you not to move in. Bear in mind that landlords do usually have their own key and even if you're living with someone else, there's always going to be a time when you?re home alone, and I know, from experience, that the worst thing ever is not feeling comfortable or safe in your own home. It's a horrible feeling.

Just use your initiative here. That's all I can really suggest.

*********Private letting agents*************

At one point, when my boyfriend and I were getting quite desperate and thought we?d never find anywhere suitable to live, we saw an ad in Loot for a 'Private Letting Agent', who would 'solve all our problems and find us the perfect place to live'. It sounded ideal, a huge weight off our shoulders, so off we went to the West End to meet this agent. His 'office' was in a dodgy back street, on the 10th floor of a very dodgy looking building where strange people huddled in groups outside the entrance doors, looking, yes you guessed it, plain dodgy. When we were finally seen, at least an hour after our pre-arranged appointment time, we were told we had to pay £75 in cash upfront, before they would even sit down and discuss what we were looking for.

Needless to say, we were out of there pretty quick. But I'm sure there are lot of people more desperate than us (if that's possible!), who would have, however reluctantly, parted with their money. My advice to you, please avoid these dodgy so called 'private letting agents'. They are nothing but crooks. Letting agencies may initially seem a bit of a hassle, but at least it's all above board and you know
what you're getting.

********Letting Agencies***********

A letting agency is in charge of the house I am currently renting as the landlady is in Australia. Again, I found this house through Loot. It wasn't actually advertised, but the letting agency was. I gave them a call and in return they gave me a list of all the suitable properties they had available at that time.

Letting agencies, are in a way, like temping agencies (see my op about temping to read more). They do most of the work for you, i.e. you tell them exactly what you want and how much you're willing to spend and they do their best to find it for you. I joined several letting agencies when I was looking for somewhere to live, and my phone never stopped ringing.

**One piece of advice - unless you have your own furniture already, I would advise you ask the agency to find you a property that is furnished with all the necessaries. It saves a lot of money. You don't want to be going out buying beds and wardrobes. Well, not if you're me anyway. I have to stop assuming here.

I visited a number of properties, and because I wasn't in too much of a rush to find somewhere and I knew one of the agencies I had signed up with was sure to come up with something else, I was able to be picky.

After several weeks of hunting, one of my agencies contacted me, very excitedly, telling me they had found me the perfect home, and at a bargain price no less. After viewing the property - a 2 bedroomed semi-detached house with front and back garden, I was in total agreement. The rent is very low - £170 per week - for the size of the house, and the fact that it's actually got a garden.(VERY difficult to find in London!)

I'm not saying I wouldn't have found my house without a letting agency, I might well have done, but they did make the whole process a lot easier for me and I would definitely recommend letting agencies to everyone.
Obviously, as with landlords, you do have to be careful. Look around at different agencies. Only pick the best.

Letting agencies normally have quite strict rules and guidelines. For example, we aren't able to pay our rent, as we would like to, by direct debit. It has to be either cash or cheque. And if it was ever late, we would have to pay an additional charge. Also, if we ever want to do anything to the house, such as painting, drilling holes, putting curtain rails up or even getting a cat, then we must put our request in writing to the agency, who will then pass our letter on to the landlady. This can sometimes cause problems. Our landlady lives in Australia and it takes forever for post to get to her. For some stupid reason, she isn't on email. I asked permission for us to have a cat nearly 6 months ago, and I am still waiting for a response. A bit late now I suppose, because we got sick of waiting and got one anyway.

The letting agency I am with, Peter Fraser in case you're interested, also declare in their lengthy 'terms and conditions of tenancy agreement' that every six months they will come round to your property to make sure you're treating it right, that you haven't disobeyed their rules and painted all the walls bright pink and trashed and graffitied all the furniture. Luckily for us, Peter Fraser have never visited. Although we've only been in the property for about 9 months so they might still come. Uh oh!...where will we hide Willow the cat, and her litter tray and food bowl and toys??? And how will we keep Willow quiet - she NEVER shuts up. I've got myself all worried now. Not good. Anyway, moving swiftly on?


*****What exactly are you looking for*******

This is something you need to have clear in your mind before you even start looking.

Are you a party animal? Do you just want somewhere to crash at night? If this is the case, you will firstly want to live near the
West End, where there is always something going on at night. And secondly, you shouldn't be all that bothered about the size of where you're living.

To be honest, if you're not totally loaded and you want to live anywhere near the West End, you're not going to find anything much larger than a studio flat anyway. A studio flat being a flat with no bedroom, often where the sofa becomes a bed at night. (Yes, it's magic!) For just over a year, I lived in fairly nice studio flat in Kentish Town, about a 30 minute bus ride from the West End. We paid £165 a week, which is quite a shocking amount if you'd seen the size of the rooms, especially the kitchen where two people could barely fit in at the same time, and the bathroom, where the toilet was so close to the bath, I'm sure my boyfriend 'missed' quite frequently. (pleasant!)

The closer to the West End you get, the smaller the flats are. We viewed a studio flat on Oxford Street - ok, very noisy, very smelly and homeless people sleeping on our would-be doorstep - but an amazing location. Inside however, it was barely bigger than a shoebox. Literally. There was a small room with a cooker and a fridge on one side, and a bed on the other. Then there was another very very small room leading onto this one, with a toilet and shower and no bath.

If you looking for something a bit nicer and aren't too fussy about travelling, your best bet is to put the bright lights of the West End behind you. You can dream, but you will never be able to afford a 4-storey house overlooking Hyde Park.

I soon discovered that the cheapest and least dodgy flats and houses are all situated in East London - Leyton and Leytonstone in particular. In fact, the 2 bedroomed semi that I now rent is just outside Leyton, in Forest Gate. Somewhere most people have actually never heard of. In East London, you can pay as little as £120 a week for a 2 bedroom flat. And yes, that IS a
small amount for London, believe me.

Although my house is lovely, and I am so happy to have a garden and a cat, the area isn't really that great. Ok. so it's not exactly rough and there's little crime - that I've personally witnessed or heard about, - but there is very little to do. The nearest cinema is in Stratford, a 25 minute bus ride away - and the best clothes shops you can expect to find are Primark, Mark One and New Look. Oh, and every other person seems to be a stoned Jamaican.

Getting around can sometimes be a problem as well. Forest Gate isn't on a tube line so it takes me a while to get to work. However, if you live in Leyton or Leytonstone, you'll be on the central line which will take you directly to the centre of London. So it's not that bad. Although you should remember that the tubes stop running about at about 12.30am, and there is no direct bus route back to Leyton.

********Moving in*********

Moving into your new house or flat is always exciting. Stressful, but very exciting. I love deciding where everything should go and spend weeks arranging and rearranging. Drives my boyfriend mad.

If you have a lot of stuff, I would advise you hire a small van. If you can drive, or know someone who can and is willing to help, I would suggest you hire just the van, and not the man to go with it. They come at a higher rate and aren't worth it. ;0)

Get as many people as possible to help you move in. You'll need a lot of hands to carry all those boxes.

Walk slowly round the house and make a note of everything that's damaged. Then hand it to the letting agent or landlord/lady. That way when you move out you won't be forced to pay for any damage you didn't cause.

Get a spare set of keys cut. You'll probably loose the originals while you're unpacking.

And finally... buy a bottle of champagne. You've got a great reason to ce
lebrate.

Summary: