My pains of moving house in London

Moving houses is always a pain whether you are based in India or abroad. While in Bangalore, I had avoided that pain by extending my contract till I finally left Bangalore. But here in London, I was not so lucky.

I was staying in a one bedroom apartment in London, however since the house was located at the top of a typical English house, my room roofs were all slanted. Again this house was good enough when I was staying alone, but now that my husband was finally going to join me in London, I had to start looking for another house. And so started my search ...

I was supposed to work out of London for a period of 6 weeks, right bang at the time when I was supposed to be searching for a new house and shifting. At that time, my husband was also not based in London, so we had a span of 4 days (2 weekends) when we had to see the houses and finalise one. Yes, there are a couple of good websites that you can use when you are searching for houses but there is no guarantee that the houses listed on the website are available. Sometimes they are just not updated. Also, it is very difficult to get a house which is within your budget, your timelines, and within the locality that you want. As a final move, I had to go to property agencies to give them my criteria and view their property listings.

And thus started my calls to register myself in their agencies and give them my criteria for the house. At first there was nothing that would suit me, not because I am choosy, trust me, I am not. The houses that I saw were just not good for the rent that I would pay. Ok, so most of the houses that I saw was via StreetsAhead and some might say that is the reason why I could not get anything properly. But again, atleast they were polite enough and interested to show me the properties, unlike some of the agencies that I called and who just said you are registered and will call back after some days or forgot completely. The agency with whom I had my existing house were just not interested in showing me alternate properties – I guess this is how it works here. If you are leaving us, it does not matter if we have any other houses, we just won’t show it to you!!

Finally after much search (ok not that much, we were under time pressure though) we found a house that we liked and which was within our budget as well. We had a couple of misgivings that we had identified and that we wanted to put in the contract as ‘to be fixed’. The Townends (from whom we took the house) made a show that yes they talked to the owner and the owner is ok with the changes/conditions that we had for the agreement. With this reassurance, we paid the holding fees and were told that we would get a mail from them for the receipt as well as some time later get a call for them for the next steps. Now this agency charges the maximum administration fees – 350£ - for what !! – well for preparing a 20 page agreement document. Ha ha !!!

As the days passed by and my previous tenancy term was coming to an end, I started getting flustered. The agency had still not contacted me with any further steps. I called them up to check where they were and they gave me an answer that ‘they deal with check-ins and check-outs in the next 48 hour basis’. Obviously I had contacted them 2 weeks advance and they were least bothered with me. But a tleast as a courtesy they could have kept me abreast of what was happening. As a result, I got different phone calls from different agents in Townends – one mentioning that the date that I had specified for move in is not feasible since the previous tenant would not have moved out by then, and the other saying that it is not the case. Now, considering that this agency is so huge and has so many branches, I believe there should be some kind of processes that they follow – may be not CMMI level processes but some processes nevertheless. It is ridiculous that they were not on the same page of when the check out was going to happen. Furthermore, the only reason why we had said ok to the house was because we had given the holding deposit for a specific check in date. And so it continued till 3 working days before the check-in. I received the agreement papers at 5 pm along with notes mentioning I had to pay the remaining charges (rent, deposit, etc) 3 working days before the check-in date. Now, who was joking !!! Guess they forget that the banks don’t operate on our whims and fancies and if something is needed on time, it has to start properly from all ends. We paid the money on the same date, ok made the bank payment, god knows when it reached the agency. Now for the conditions that we had mentioned when we paid the holding deposit – these were not mentioned in the agreement because the owner was not ok with them. Did we have a choice to go ahead with some other house, no of-course we did not, because nobody would give us a ready to move in house in 3 days. We had to accept the agreement as it was.

We thought thank god the circus is over and finally we will get the keys. And lo and behold, Saturday comes and we get a call from the agent saying that they had not received the payment and hence they cannot give the keys – Reason – the headoffice which keeps the payment records is closed on Saturday and they cannot confirm if the payment was made.. Now whose fault is that ? The tenants’ – who dispite all odds made the payment on time as soon as the agreement was signed, or the agency – to whom we paid 350£ just to ensure that we get a good service and who kept on giving excuses till the last moment and could not confirm anything to us. Again after lot of frantic attempts, we understood that the previous tenant is going to leave before us, and we are going to get the keys on time and they were ok with the payment receipt that we had from the bank. Thus ended my grievances with the agency when we finally got the keys to the house and started shifting.

                Now if you ask me – did I get my money’s worth? Is the 20 page agreement enough for me when the basics that I ask are not provided? There were two main things that I had asked for when I paid the holding amount – time of the check in and conditions to be added in the agreement – Both of which were not full-filled. This is the kind of service that I received for my money.

Is it better if you search for the house on your own – without agents? There is a risk here as well – if the owner is good, you would be happy, if not then you would be in deep trouble.

If you go ahead with agents – well that I can tell with my experience with Bairstow eves as well as Townends – they are just sales people, who once you have committed, do not bother with you , just telling you to keep on moving from one call to another trying to find the right person who can answer your queries.