hello and welcome to British English with Joel and Lia today's video is all
about finding a place to live in London
so this video has kindly been sponsored
by Homie who are a company that will help you find the perfect place to live
in London and at a really reasonable price so we'll talk a little bit more
about them within the video but first off we're going to talk about how
difficult it was to find a place to live in London.
Our own experiences we've both
moved multiple times not just when we first moved to London but multiple times
since then and, about six times i've moved!
yeah I think mines similar as well
thats mental
and it's so exciting I like the build
up of being like oh I'm planning on moving house in six months I better
start looking but as soon as you've started looking I hate it it's so much pressure
it's the worst thing because it's like you have to put your life on hold just to find
looking for a place oh definitely and there's certain times of year as well have
you found this where moving is okay where moving is bad like if you move
around September that's really hard to find somewhere because all of the new
students from universities are looking for houses as well or flats and like
you've got to just time your move because some times are busier than others
and just thinking about all these things is just not something you want to
stress about when you've got probably your own job and other stuff going on
and a YouTube channel to be running and yeah so basically when you're looking
for a place in London if you don't know where to start
someone might tell you well you have to get online you need to go on Zoopla or
you need to go on Rightmove and you have to scroll for hours and hours and hours
and hours and hours the amount of nights I went to bed at like 3 / 4 a.m. because
it's just gone I've spent so long on the website I'm not found anywhere or just
seeing the same places over and over again so once you've found a couple of
places after looking for hours and hours you have to then get on the phone to
estate agents and that's one of my least favorite things is giving out my email
address or phone number to loads of different estate agents everywhere
want all of your details yes so thats a nightmare
I normally refuse and I think you guys should do
this as well because it's a handy little tip don't give (well unless you're
desperate) I guess it's diffrerent for different people but I never give
out my phone number to estate agents I only give them my email address so
they'll respond being like give me your phone number please and I'll give you a call
and I just say no sorry I prefer I prefer to communicate via email
because I'm not being called 24/7 by these estate agents
I'm like
If you've got a house to show me just email it to me
you don't give out your phone number completely understand that so not many
people have had good experiences with estate agents it's not a cliche it's
true it is
I'm sorry to say this if there's any estate agents watching but I
really don't like them not personally I'm sure they're nice people at home but
they always have an agenda estate agents aren't unbiased people they want to sell
you like even if it's just to rent they want to sell you a property and get your
money and they earn money from you spending your money
exactly so once you've found a place you then have to deal with all of
the admin and lots of contracts and estate agent fees and all sorts of
horrible things and essentially by the time you've moved in you've probably
fallen out with all of your flatmates and gained about ten gray hairs
yeah not even joking and also if you're not even from London
then all of this is like completely foreign and you you don't even know
where to begin the amount of horror stories there are and I think most of it
is people not from this country coming over to live and getting scammed because
how are you supposed to know?
so instead of doing all of that yourself and all of
that admin all of that stress in the estate agents and lalalala we just wish
we knew about a company like Homie before moving house because what they do
is incredible they they charge you a flat rate of 88 pounds but they sort out
all of your viewings all in one day in two hours and they even arrange a black
cab to take you from one viewing to the next honestly the best thing I've ever
heard of!
like I'm definitely gonna use them next time I move house because like
for all the reasons we've said the negatives about looking for a house in
London they kind of solve all of those issues because they're the ones dealing
with the estate agents so once you've signed up to Homie
you'll be assigned a personal home finder which they call a Homie and they
will trawl through all of the things that you've given them so I want a two
bed flat wooden floors maybe a fireplace would be a nice bonus but definitely a
garden needs to be near Embankment station or needs to be near Bermondsey!
you give them all that info they'll find all the properties and that suit that
description and send it to you and you'll go through and pick the ones that
you like send it back to them and they'll book all the viewings they'll
deal with the nasty estate agents they'll tell you what all the contracts
mean what the price is and they'll take you on a tour of the houses in a black
cab and they will keep it within your budget so if your budget is I know my
budget I think when I was moving out last time I said I don't want to spend more
than six hundred pounds a month yeah and my flatmates had similar budgets so I was
like that was the maximum so Homie will work within your budget
and I just see it's amazing that you know rather than sitting online
finding somewhere then calling up and then the estate agent being like oh no
that place went a week ago we just haven't taken off the website yet just
all of this stress could so easily be eliminated by handing it all your brief
to a Homie who will do it all for you I just think they're incredible and you
could think that 88 pounds is quite expensive but when you think about
you're essentially getting like a celebrity service thats what I thought of it as like!
obviously when celebrities move house and things they won't deal with anything
they'll just get their personal assistant to sort everything for them
it's like having your own personal assistant so good and also the fact
that you can do it unlimited amount of times it's great so if you don't find a
house on the first round of viewings you just keep the process going until you've
found somewhere and you're not charged any extra money and they have like
a really high success rate they usually say that after the first time or the
second time people have found something that they're happy with and they go
ahead which is great and if you think about it how expensive cabs are just to
get from here to there yeah definitely I think the fact that the cab will take
you from one viewing to the next and wait for you yes that's incredible really
since we've been chatting to Homie I must have told about 10 people
yeah family family friends about it and they've already got a ton of questions for
me so I've had to actually direct them to Homie website
questions I can't actually answer I told
my parents about Homie and they were like oh so it's basically like Kirsty and Phil
you know because Kirsty and Phil have the program here in the UK and they go and
find people houses and it's basically that!
So if there's anyone called Kirsty that works at Homie!
I just can't wait to use them
because I just think
I just think I can't wait to move house
literally i've been telling my flatmates cause I wanna use Homie!
I just think it makes it so much easier and they are
completely unbiased I don't know if we've already said that but that's what
I like the fact that estate agents have an agenda which is to sell you that
property and they might lie about a property the condition of it just to get
you to sign the paperwork whereas having a third party they're like Homie
completely unbiased they can be like actually you know what I don't think
this is a good deal for you even though it's a really nice house is just not a good
deal so let's go and find another one yeah that's I think that honesty
is really important it is really important also have you ever thought
about safety when viewing homes you're thinking I'm meeting a random person who I've
spoken to on the phone hey they might not even be an estate agent and we're gonna
be going into this house I'm alone my flatmates couldn't make it at least with Homie
would homie they're there with you in the cab they come to the viewings with
you yeah let's just remember from a safety point of view as well like going to view
a flat at 6 p.m. in the winter and it's pitch-black outside and you're meeting a
stranger I don't know I just another thing to think about
but also just
reminded me if you can't make the viewing if you're from abroad and you
just can't get to the country to view the houses your Homie will go for you
and record all of the properties and then send you all of the videos so you
don't even have to be here to use Homie they can do it for you but
obviously it's nice to see it in person yeah like I think the video thing's
really great if you're doing like say a couple of you are viewing it there's
some more housemates who don't live in the UK yeah but they really want to see
it they need to see what their rooms are gonna look like
it's so 21st century its so 2017
you guys know that we would never recommend any brand
to you regardless of whether we've been sponsored or not if we didn't genuinely
believe in it and like we are as you can see quite excited about it!
we asked them if we could work with them!
that's how excited we were
so on another note I find it really
daunting the fact that people live with strangers like in London because I know
that's a common thing if you don't have a community in London of course you have
to move in with strangers but I've always lived with friends I've never
lived with strangers yeah I find that a bit scary I've done it both ways so I've
lived with school mates friends boyfriends and then the place I'm living
now I live with complete strangers well what used to be complete strangers but
we've sort of started our own friendships now and like me and my
housemate Emma we'll go to the pub and well you know there is half-price food
every Tuesday at our local and you know we just sort of have like this no steaks
friendship it's like we don't expect anything from each other at all like
there's no pressure to like be in the house or buy someone a birthday thing or
like you know there's just no pressure which I love yeah and no one's up in my
business and you know I've got Joel around all the time here filming and
stuff no one's like who is this person in our house? it's so yeah
it's kind of great yeah I love it
I forget that you live with strangers because they're your friends now
yes weird yeah it's just odd because lots of people I've heard people that
have moved here saying the same things
i'm just too scared to live with
strangers yeah but she's not that scary when you think about it but you've done
it yeah and they become like friends after a while
it was really funny
so moving in here I kind of had to like audition so I found it online and then
I turned up I got shortlisted by the way from like hundreds of hundreds and
hundreds of people who wanted this amazingly big room you can't tell from
this shot right now but this room is very big for a London bedroom
you cannot find a bedroom in London this big
I dunno maybe Homie can!
London this big anymore for the amount of rent that I pay is really small
anyway so I got shortlisted and then I had to come to my first meeting and I
turn up and there's like other people leaving and stuff and I'm like oh my god
anyway then I got a phone call like oh we've got other housemates that would
love to meet you can you come back and do a second meeting! so i'm thinking this is
harder than getting an acting job yeah so harder than landing a commercial so I
come to the the second meeting no joke there's a girl who looks exactly like me
leaving the building I'm like this is too much like so I come in and I'm so
nervous and I'm just like I can't believe I'm nervous about house share this
is what London has become
and yeah and then I was with you we were having
Nando's and you were thinking about like another property came available for a
guardianship which is another video we'll make something about that
being a Guardian in an abandoned building in London
so for cheaper than this I could have been a Guardian and you were just
about you were just about to be like maybe I should reply to them and say I'm gonna come and visit the
guardianship and yeah I got the phone call saying you got you got the job
you got the room its yours
Lia cried she was like thank you so much
finally when you somewhere in London you're just like oh my gosh
and then and then the stress begins again when you when you realise after
six months you wanna move again yeah definitely I mean why is it we like
moving all the time I don't think I've stayed anywhere
for longer than a year and a half
but I think it's difficult because obviously
London prices are very expensive it pushes you further out yeah and you just start to
you get very particular like oh this is great like the money is good
like amount I pay, but the room is slightly too small or I don't like a person that
I live with or or it might be the other way around you're like I love it there's
just too much money and there's so many variables yeah but I guess that makes
you want to move on
mostly money money is the only thing that can get you down in London
it's like your bank balance is close to zero all the time all the time don't
they say London is like the happiest place for you to live if
money is no object or something it's something like something like that I
quote like that yeah I mean I can't imagine me living anywhere else right
now at this point in my life no me neither
maybe Brighton maybe but I just think I'd get bored it's a little bit of a
a little bit boring I think I've contemplated like moving to other
places like Brighton or Bristol whatever but I don't have any friends there and
that's what scares me I'm like
you can't just think oh
just meet up with my friend today because you're like I don't actually have any friends yet
I always just calculate how far away it would be for me to get home home in an
emergency yeah how long it would take me to get to the Midlands yeah
friends I always just think I'll see them! i'll make them
I'll just whip up some friends
I can't imagine myself living anywhere but London right now
it makes me so happy living here being so close to everything yeah
it's a great place to live and I think it is I mean I haven't visited every
city in the world but I've heard it's the best city in the world yeah
London is the capital of the world
London has the most amount of billionaires that live here in the world
so you'd assume that if you have a billion pounds you kind of know what's
good yeah
I know whats good
so guys if you are looking for somewhere to live in London we hope that
it's going well and check out Homie their links are in our description they're
really really cool personable brand lovely people and so check them out and
that's know in the comments if you have any success yeah we'd love to hear any
questions you have just pop them in the comments we'll try our best to get get
back to you
definitely if you want to catch up in a pub!
okay guys we hope
you've enjoyed this video and we will see you next time see you next time
Bye!