Flat Hunt

This move is exactly the opposite of spontaneous. Before Joe and I got engaged I spent nearly a year reading American-expat-in-London blogs and researching what it might mean for us to make this leap. I tried to prepare. (I realize now that was nearly impossible.) Joe, on the other hand, just asks me when our flight is and when he needs to show up. For him, everything just seems to work itself out somehow. 

One of the best preparations I made was hiring London Relocation to help us find a home. Real Estate in London (I don't know about the rest of the UK), is different from the US in that real estate agents can only show homes that they are responsible for selling. Flats are in high demand, so they often are off the market by the time you even know there's availability. Finding a place on our own would involve a web of details including location, price, letting agents, foreign contracts, public transportation, and a lot of stress. I found London Relocation back in 2011 and began reading their blog because it included a lot of interesting and helpful details about moving here. Despite the expense of the service, I booked an appointment because they claim to place 90% of clients in just one day.

While we were in Prague, Joe and I had a phone interview with Anthony, the American expat owner of London Relocation. He asked about our interests and preferences, what we would be doing in London, our budget (extremely low for these parts) and our deal breakers (no studios - our sleeping schedules are too different). He settled on two or three areas that he thought we'd like and we scheduled our viewing day. 

We arrived in London on Wednesday, September 18 in the afternoon. On Friday and Saturday I was due at the International Students Orientation for school. We had Thursday, and Thursday only, to find a place that could make us feel at home when we're homesick, a base for our travel, a location that would be good for work, school, and play.

At about 9 am we met Anthony and our driver at the Notting Hill tube station. They promptly drove us to an appointment after appointment, each with a different letting agent. If Joe and I had tried to organize this day on our own, not only would the transportation have been a complete nightmare, but we would have had to sign up with at least half a dozen different agencies to see the same places. That's a lot of fees and stress we avoided.

Here are some highlights of the places we did not choose:

Most places we looked were Victorian conversions, meaning a single family home has been split up into individual flats. These usually included extremely narrow staircases and some odd floorplans.

Most London flats are furnished or semi-furnished when you rent them. This was incredibly convenient for us since all we brought with us was clothes and a few personal items. This bare set up was pretty traditional. "Furnished" tends to mean that it includes a bed, couch, and perhaps a few side tables or a wardrobe.

The tiniest kitchen we saw. The mini-fridge you see is actually 
the size of most refrigerators in London flats.

Some places were more decorated than others. This one was elaborate and old-fashioned and we would not have been allowed to change it. Yikes! (But look at that amazing ceiling!)

Some interesting facts about London flats (as far as we saw)
- Washing machines are small and usually found in the kitchen.
- Most people hang dry their clothes, but if you're lucky enough to have an electric dryer it will most likely be in combination with the washer; one load of laundry will take 3-5 hours to wash and dry.
- Dishwashers are basically non-existent.
- There are no outlets in the bathrooms. It's illegal in the UK.
- There's a tv tax for just hooking your television to basic cable. For this reason we did not plan to have television.
- Bed sizes are different here (read: smaller). It is much more common to see an American full size bed for a couple than a Queen or King. Kings are a luxury to be experienced in hotels.
- Most refrigerators we saw were of the dorm room mini variety, but occasionally we saw something that I'd like to call the "junior fridge" which is about half way between a mini fridge and a regular apartment fridge at home. Full-sized refrigerators like we'd find in houses at home are simply out of the question.

Our flat was the fourth we saw out of about a dozen. We had more on our list for the day but we cancelled the rest of our appointments once we'd heard that our offer had been accepted. Instead we headed to the leasing agent's office to spend over 2 hours signing paperwork and transferring money. One thing that people who are considering moving here should know is that if you are not being sponsored by an employer, you will most likely be asked to pay 6 months of rent up front. I'm sponsored by UCL but Joe's visa is technically sponsored by me, so we fell into this category. While it was scary to see so much of our money leave the account at once, it is nice not to have to worry about rent until April.

Now our flat.

The benefits we noticed when we viewed the place:
        - it has a dishwasher!
        - the washing machine is a washer-dryer!
        - location in Highgate near Hampstead Heath
        - fully furnished PLUS a new television that the landlady agreed to throw in
        - one of the largest refrigerators we'd seen
        - only half a flight of stairs up in a building that was built for flats, not a conversion

The detractors that made us a little nervous:
        - extremely tiny bedroom that would force us to crawl over each other to get into bed as it is lodged between 3 of the four walls.

Our neighborhood includes 3 streets of buildings identical to ours. 
They were built in the 1920s as apartments for young working women, 
or so we were told.

Welcome! Make yourself comfortable!

On the left: bathroom door. On the right: bedroom door.

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you: that's a double bed that takes 
up more than half of the room and is touching three of the four walls!

The Living Space: the couch is a fold-out and the table can be 
expanded to accommodate 6. Plus the chandelier is amazing!

Our junior fridge has mirrored doors! The TV cabinet is nearly the only extra storage we have.

Our kitchen. All of the essentials accounted for plus quite a few fun extras we didn't expect: dishwasher, wine rack (can you see it?), dishes, cookware, bakeware, blender, immersion blender, food processor, toaster, fancy coffee maker, and much more. We have bought a few odds and ends and added a couple accessories from home (julienne peeler, food scale), but we were more than set up to cook full meals when we arrived on move-in day. One thing to remember when we're grocery shopping, though, is that the cabinet above the coffee maker is the only storage we have for dry goods and food.

Limited storage means these are all of our dishes, silverware, and cooking tools. 
Yes, they're out like that all the time.

our little balcony has a view into a shared green space

This is our entire closet space for both of us. Seriously.

Bathroom with the weird half door on the shower.

The view down our street toward the City. You can see the London Eye!

Our bus stop is right at the end of our street - so convenient.

The benefits of our flat now that we know better:

- Our amazing landlady, P, who has been more accommodating and helpful than I can possibly describe. She let us take over her utilities and cable/wifi/phone so that there were no gaps in our service. She also dealt with the companies for us so that we didn't have to figure out any unusual foreign practices. When she found that we didn't have any house-stuff with us, she left EVERYTHING we could possibly need. This is just a short list:

        * towels and bedclothes, including pillows

        * shoe racks, coat racks, hamper

        * surge protectors, dvd player, wii

        * trash cans, soaps and cleaners

        * coffee maker, electric kettle, tons of fun extras in the kitchen

- Our neighborhood is quiet and surrounded by parks and trees. Living in a city as big as London, we never expected that.
- It's cozy and comfortable and modern.

The detractors we totally didn't notice and now just have to figure out:
- We don't have a garbage disposal. Apparently they're extremely rare here but it didn't even occur to me to look for one.
- We don't have a microwave. Our fridge is too small to hold a lot of leftovers anyway, but any we keep have to be able to be re-heated in the oven or on the stove. That includes night-time coffee for me.

We have now been living in our flat for a month and we love it. We've also been lucky enough to find that a lot of the people we meet also live in the Borough of Camden or near Highgate.

On one side of our neighborhood is Hampstead Heath, on the other is Highgate Cemetery. After we moved in I remembered that I'd read a book before my Scotland trip that was set in a cemetery in London (Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, the author of The Time-Traveler's Wife); sure enough, the whole thing took place on the edge of Highgate Cemetery, basically in what is now my backyard. Strange how the things we read come back into our lives.