Monday 25 June 2012

Rent-a-Home

I haven't written lately because it's been a bit hairy around here and it's been all I can do to keep from melting into a little puddle of panic.

OK, quick catch-up: previously on "Selling a Home..." - the house sold for a good enough price, no one would give us a mortgage1, the Outlaws kindly volunteered to pay off our creditors via CAB2, and we've been looking for a place to rent in Ely.

Ayah. Rental hunting. What a delightful torture that is.

I enjoyed looking in the windows - rightmove.co.uk and Zoopla are great - but lo there was a tiny but oh so significant snag: many, many places we looked at had a "No Kids" policy, which was deeply disappointing. Three out of four places were kid-unfriendly which surprised me. It surprised me more when the reasons given for "inappropriate for children" were "front door opens out onto the street", "no garden" and "it's a flat". Er, so? I managed to survive high-rise living from birth to 20 and FBB lived in a front-door-on-the-street house from one to 20+. Neither of us (nor our neighbours come to think of it, suicides excluded3) had been hurt / traumatised by the experience. Aah! They just don't want to have to deal with kids.


Then there was the size vs location vs parking vs will-our-fridge-fit4 dilemma. 


Finally, the Letting Agents have been... varied. I am partial to one but they didn't have any places to rent that suited us. 


Well, after a fair number of ups and downs, today we found a great little place. The slightly spooky thing is, the family living there seemed like a mirror image of us (dad was at home putting out the laundry with their three-year old, mum was at work, bookshelves were full of the same books as ours - so there were no grown up geeky toys and nary a tattoo was in sight, but you get the picture!)


I'm not saying much more than it's a nice little walk to work, big enough for all of us, the fridge and the car. Until we're in, I'm keeping mum!

1 Which really knocked me for six but a really kind independent mortgage adviser helped ease the pain. I found him through www.unbiased.co.uk. But here are his full details: Huw Tipton (DipPFS), Tel: 01553 764644, Fax: 05603109527, enquiries@cambridgeifa.com

2 Some creditors were great (Capital One, MBNA), some were so very not (Tesco, NatWest). FBB has decreed a No-Tesco policy.

3 And I am fairly certain they did not kill themselves because they were living in a high-rise building.

4 FBB is very attached to our fridge. We had invested a fair amount of time and effort in selecting and purchasing our box of cool.

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