The saga of the hunt for housing...........

Although it was perhaps not the quickest of starts nearly two weeks ago, I have certainly made up for anything smacking of "lost time" to the point I am at right now having completed a fairly robust quantity of searching.  One thing you would need to know though is that the real estate situation in Portsmouth is highly segmented with  dozens of different offices.  I am not sure how many offices I've been to, but its been more than a dozen and, through an automated website, signed up for searching assist with 20 offices and to date I have viewed more than two dozen flats, townhouses, etc.  It is still very much a work in progress, there are a couple hopefuls, but I haven't moved on anything just yet.  Crazy thing is that some places are close, but is missing a little something.  Of course it doesn't help any that a house hunting trip wasn't allowed, seems obvious that this is a necessary step for a functional move.  Anyway, choosing furniture to bring with you without knowing where you are moving is a great definition of flying blind.  Getting back to those couple hopefuls that are missing something, well, the door might be too narrow, a stair way might be to tight, living rooms too small, no balcony or garden, all of which is a hiccup when considering what furniture I have brought with me.  Another difficulty I've dealt with is that I came to town at the same time as the bulk of the college students and looking for something at the same time, not so easy.  Entertaining at times, but not so easy.  It really as if we are looking at the same places, but there is some overlap and, if I want something a little larger, considering student themed houses are one of few avenues.  This brings me to the point of this story and this post.

I forget how many places I looked at last Thursday, I think maybe 3 or 4 between two different agents.  The second agent shows me a place, good enough, but another one that is in that category of student housing but something I would think about.  As we walk around the flat the agent tells me the story about the flat as I do not remember seeing it online and I've seen most any flat anywhere near my searching parameters.  The reason why I hadn't seen it was that, up to the night before, it was reserved by five Chinese students.  The students actually had a friend of a friend come down from London to search for a place and aid in the coordination, they then reserved it paying a deposit, and finally the owner (who had been living in the flat) moved out early and prepped the flat awfully well to facilitate the students moving in upon arrival in the UK in time for the school year to start.  Well, the students show up and immediately proceed to tell the agent they think it smells, that it is too expensive, they don't want to live there, they are going somewhere else because they need to move in immediately, and they don't care about the trouble the owner went through.  Sure, they have a right to do it, but they were awfully rude in how they went about doing it.  Thing is, they lose their deposit but even more crazy, there is no way they are going to find a new place and move in immediately but they thought nothing of it.  The agent is telling me all of this as we walk around and it is a nice enough place but the owner was going to charge the students 2000 pounds and I'm not paying that much.

The next day I have appointments with four agents looking at 7 properties.  I go to the office to meet up with the third agent and, when I enter the store front office, sure enough there are 5 Chinese students.  It took about five seconds for it to click, but when it did I fought the urge to laugh or scold them for manners.  The agent and I head out and in the car he confirmed that it was almost definitely the same group, real estate agents talk.