[Miscellaneous] Flat hunting

Last week I finally decided to do something about my living arrangements for my new job, and go flat-hunting. Yay! I just love looking around for somewhere to live <\sarcasm> The first choice was whether to go for Coventry of Leamington Spa. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Warwick I stuck to Coventry, and after some deliberation and research decided to do the same this time around. I wanted to stick close enough that I could cycle to work, didn't particularly fancy dealing with the traffic getting to and from Leamington at rush-hour, and the prices in Leamington seemed to be a little higher. So Coventry it was.

I travelled down on Monday, and on the journey phoned around some estate agents to arrange viewings for properties I'd found on Rightmove that looked promising. Sadly a lot of them had tennants in, so there was a lot of "we'll have to check with them and get back to you". But I managed to get viewings for three properties to start with: two on Tuesday, and one on Wednesday afternoon.

The first flat I went to see was in Earlsdon, not to far from where I lived as a student for a couple of years. The landlord showed us around, and to be honest it wasn't very nice. Yes, it was the cheapest flat I had short-listed, and yes, there was a decent amount of space. But it wasn't very clean, some of the kitchen was showing its age, and the landlord didn't seem concerned by getting it professionally cleaned before I moved in. To be honest, he didn't seem to bothered by anything. There were also some suspicious cracks in the walls, and some broken light switches and such. It just wasn't great.

(Credit: laughingsquid.com)

The second flat I went to see was much, much better. I'd earmarked it as a good prospect before I went to visit, and it lived up to that. It was on the top floor of a small block of flats in Styvechall, which is a nice area of Coventry, and the flat itself was nicely decorated, and very nicely presented. It was full of the tennants furniture but comes unfurnished, which is always tricky, but imagining it empty it seemed to have plenty of space. There's a small balcony for some private outdoor space, and the kitchen is really nice. Not everything was great - the door to the bathroom was some weird sliding concertina thing, the washing machine was ancient, and the bathroom itself could have been nicer and needed the wallpaper looking at. But overall it seemed like a really good prospect.

On Wednesday my booking was for a newly refurbished flat in Canley. This was a big surprise - the outside isn't brilliant, but does have offroad parking, but the inside was amazing. It was completely empty, and the living room/dining room was huge. The kitchen was a bit on the small side, could ahve done with more cupboard space, and lacked white goods, but apart from that it was very, very nice. Canley's not the nicest area of the city, but it's perfectly acceptable and the flat was right next to a TA base, so nice and safe!

The two flats I liked weren't quite this nice or this big - if only! But they were still 

pretty good for my budget. (Credit: freshome.com)

I then did some ringing around to chase up some of the 'waiting on tennants' properties, and snagged a couple of extra viewings. The first was in Chapelfields, and was in wat turned out to be a really, really nice housing estate just of the main road that I had no idea even existed. Sadly the house itself was a little shabby, and on the small side. There was obvious damage from a leak that the estate agent was very upfront about, but even ignoring that there were some bits and bobs that weren't very nice. The second was another flat in Earlsdon that was absolutely tiny. It wasn't a studio flat, but I'm still not convinced that it wouldn't be better as one. It was perfectly nice, just really, really small.

It wasn't quite this small, but it wasn't far off! (Credit: mirror.co.uk)

I only had one other viewing booked, on the Thursday, but that turned into a disaster. It was actually for a flat in the block next to the one I viewed on the Tuesday, but after it got moved forward by half an hour I forgot how bad the traffic was in Coventry at rush hour. Arriving hot, stressed, and 15 minutes late I was told that the person who viewed it before me had elected to take it; c'est la vie. It was frustrating, as I'd been very interested in it - it was quite a bit cheaper than the flat in the neighbouring block, so I wanted to see why.

In the end I decided to go for the Styvechall flat that was the second one I viewed on Tuesday. It's expensive, and unfurnished, but within my budget and with an Ikea in Coventry getting cheapish furniture shouldn't be too bad. At around 3.7miles from work it's easily within cycling distance too, and as I mentioned earlier the area seems really nice (I had a drive around it after my failed viewing). I went into the estate agent on my way home yesterday to fill out the application form, so fingers crossed that everything works out!