Househunting Rant

I've been holding this off until I finally found a place to live (which I did last night, and on the King's Road to boot ), but the whole charade of house-hunting has given me so much unnecessary stress that I need to blow off a little steam.

I currently live in Fulham, at the Putney Bridge end of it. It's a nice area, leafy, quiet and wanted somewhere around SW London as I like the area and there are good deals to be had. We moved into our flat about 18 months ago, initially as a stop-gap as we were all moving to London after Uni. As we gradually fell in love with the area, the stop-gap became 18 months until one of my flatmates got himself a job oop north and so a new place was sought. Despite commencing our search 6 weeks before the move-out date, we've only just found somewhere with 5 days to spare (thank God).

Here are some things about the whole house-hunting ordeal that have p*ssed me off something awful. Hopefully you can relate to some or all of these and we can all have a nice cathartic e-hug and feel better about ourselves. For the benefit of reference, I've been exclusively using Gumtree as that's how we found our first place.

- People not replying. This really is basic human courtesy. I tell you a little bit about me, ask a few questions about the place, I'm polite, eloquent yet you don't even have the good grace to reply to me? It's 25 seconds out of your life to tell me that the place is no longer available or I'm not the sort of person you're looking for. Seriously, have some basic manners.

- A double room is not always a double room. I'm quite a tall person and find single beds rather annoying as my feet poke out of the end. Hence I like double beds. However, just because, with the help of your mates and a jar of vaseline, you've managed to somehow squeeze a double mattress into a room ill-designed for the purpose does not constitute a double room. Unless you're assuming I have no worldly possessions aside from a coffee mug and a spoon (as that's all the room can now feasibly accomodate), it's really not going to do, is it.

- 'Close to transport'. Now coming from the countryside, I know what it is to be miles from anywhere, where you have to walk for three miles to get a bus that comes but twice a day. However, a 20 minute walk from the nearest train / tube station does not mean that it's close to transport links.

- Ladies only. I'm a guy and will happily live with anyone within reason. However, I respect that a house with all ladies may wish to have another lady living in their house, or may wish to maintain a gender balance within the place. That's fine by me and if you make that clear in your advert that you're explicitly looking for a girl, I won't bother replying. However, please be so kind as to mention this in your advert that you're looking for a girl! Don't neglect to mention this in the advert and then get all p*ssy when I reply to it. The more specific you are about what you want, the more chance that someone fitting the bill will reply.

- If it's gone, take the advert down! I appreciate that there's a high turnover of people and places on here. Good places in good locations tend to get snapped up. That's life. So please, if someone has taken your room, kindly find 30 seconds in your day to take the advert down so as to save me the trouble of replying. Again, this is basic human courtesy and will save you time by not having to reply to everyone.


I could go on...

Hopefully you can relate to all, some or none of this. Awesome places do exist out there (as happily I've just found one) and perhaps it is a rite of passage that I see so many disgusting, overpriced places inhabited by ghastly people I wouldn't trust further than I could throw before I find the place for me.

Happy househunting,