- There was t-shirts still in the closet.
They had left a lump of what looked like
still wet towels on the bathroom floor.
I'm moving back to London.
I was out in the English countryside
for the last few months
to save some money during the lockdown,
but now I'm going back into the city,
and I'm getting my own place.
So I thought I would take you along the journey
of finding my new flat in London.
By the way, if you are planning on moving to London,
then I have a special freebie for you
at the end of this video.
So make sure you watch to the end to get it.
Let me talk you through the parameters
of what I was looking for in a flat.
Location, I am looking for East London.
I'm not gonna say where specifically,
obviously for safety and privacy reasons,
but yeah, first time actually living in East London.
I have usually lived in South West London.
For the budget, again, I don't wanna be too specific
for privacy and safety reasons, but I was looking at flats
between the 1300 to 1700 range for a one to two bedroom.
Luckily, the renter's market in London is actually better
than it usually is, which is definitely a landlord's market,
and now it's more of a renter's market,
so I knew that there would be some wiggle room.
In terms of must haves,
it absolutely had to have an outdoor space,
whether it's a balcony or its own little garden,
preferably it'd be private.
Obviously with the possibility
of maybe having to go back into another lockdown,
I just can't really bear the fact
that I didn't have like my own little outdoor space
that I could be in.
I don't want something that's
a lower ground or a basement flat
because I need light for my personal sanity,
but also because I film YouTube videos
for my work in my flat.
So if there's not enough light,
then it makes it really difficult for me to film.
Unfurnished, I definitely wanted a place
that didn't have furniture in it.
I feel like furnished places so often
just have really cheap, yucky, mismatched, Ikea furniture.
And I wanted to bring my own things in
and start investing in my own pieces
that I could hold onto for a long time,
and also just wanted to put my own stamp on it.
I'm kind of sick of Ikea stuff.
And ideally, I'm looking for some place
that wouldn't be more than a half a mile
from some kind of Tube or train station.
Those are the must, must, must haves,
and then I have some nice to haves.
First being security.
This is something I really want to prioritize.
I have had some problems recently,
and then also over the last few years of,
I don't know if stalker's the right word,
but people, men just, anyway, I'm not gonna go into it.
This is in nice to haves and not must haves
because at the prices that I'm looking for,
security in terms of having somebody
who is sitting at a desk, on the door like concierge,
and any extra security elements, it's hard to find buildings
that I could afford in that range.
A dishwasher.
I have lived in flats without dishwashers,
and I have lived in ones with dishwashers,
and I was much happier when I had a dishwasher.
And storage space, ideally flats that have
like built-in closets and built-in wardrobes.
It's not a deal breaker if flats don't have those,
but it definitely helps if they do
'cause then I don't have to get my own furniture
to make up for storage that's missing.
Right, so my search began
on the popular apps for rental listings,
which are Zoopla, Rightmove, and OpenRent.
Rightmove and Zoopla are very similar.
They often have the same listings on them.
However, OpenRent is specifically for properties
that have private landlords that will be handling everything
and you won't be going through agencies.
So there are some properties on OpenRent
that you won't find on the other apps.
I began looking seriously about six weeks out
from my desired move in date,
and as soon as I would see something pop up
on one of the apps, I would reach out to the agency,
give them all my information,
and say I was interested in potentially viewing the property
after I had a video tour, and got some questions answered.
The annoying thing about working with agencies
is that when you're going through this flat hunting process,
they all will call you up,
and you have to repeat the same story over and over again
of what your budget is, what you're looking for,
why you're moving, blah, blah, blah.
It gets repetitive, but then you're in their system,
and if something pops up
before it goes onto one of these apps,
they can call you and you can go see it
before it gets listed for everybody else.
But once I had a couple of properties that looked good,
and I wanted to go do a final in-person tour,
'cause obviously with COVID,
we're trying to do as little in-person tours as possible,
especially when there's tenants still in the property,
I would lump them together into one day,
so I could go see them
without having to go in and out of London a bunch of times.
I ended up doing this three times, I think.
So I'm gonna show you all of the properties
I ended up looking at.
Flat number one, I was so excited about this
because there was good security in this building.
It's a new build, so it looked quite nice in the pictures.
The balcony had a great view,
which I'm not gonna show you, again for privacy.
However, when I got to the property, it was a complete tip,
as they say here, a complete mess.
Apparently the previous tenants had like upped sticks
and moved back to Australia pretty quickly.
But it means that I saw the flat
with all of their crap everywhere.
Like there was t-shirts still in the closet.
They had left a lump of what looked like
still wet towels on the bathroom floor.
So I had to really look beyond that,
and all of that stuff to look at the bones of the property.
But they were pretty good,
there was a huge closet in the bedroom
and a huge closet in the hallway.
It was spacious for one person.
Again, I loved the view from the balcony,
but the condition of the flat wasn't
as good as I'd hoped it would be.
The floors had like a lot of damage,
and the kitchen cabinets had some damage,
and the bathroom looked like
there was some damp in there as well.
Flat number two, I wanted to go see
because it was on the 11th floor,
and it had incredible views from its balcony.
So I went to this building,
but when I got there the flat itself was a bit rough.
It didn't really look like it had been taken care of.
It was kind of old looking, but for,
and for being so high up in the air,
it really lacked windows,
and it just didn't look very good.
They also had some like really gross furniture left
in the flat that apparently the landlords
would've been okay to get rid of
if a decent offer was put in,
but I just really wasn't keen about this place.
Flat three was actually the next week.
And I didn't film the first flat
that I originally had gone to see,
because they don't even show me the actual flat.
I saw one upstairs, and it just was like really overpriced.
But the agent said, I actually have one
that's next door that I think you might like better,
so let's have a look, and I did film that one.
The property had recently been redone.
It looked really nice, really fresh, and clean.
It was modern, it had actually decent light,
even though there wasn't a ton of windows.
There was a teeny little internal balcony,
so that does check off the outside space element for me.
The bedroom had huge built-in closets.
The bathroom was nice.
The living space wasn't very big, but that was okay.
I really liked this one.
I can deal with small spaces, I don't have that much stuff.
And if it's small space, I expect to be paying less.
So I knew I could definitely, even though it was overpriced,
I could definitely put in an offer that was lower
and would save me some money.
But right before we were about to leave,
I found out that the fridge
was just this little like under-counter fridge.
And that's really difficult for me
because I do actually cook a lot, not well, but I do cook,
so I need to have like a proper fridge.
Flat four was this cute little flat
that I had been eyeing up actually
for quite a long time on Rightmove.
It was in a great location,
but kind of between all of these
like really great local things.
I knew I was going to like it,
but I needed to see it in-person.
So I went and the landlord was actually there,
and she was so lovely.
And the flat had this cute little balcony off the kitchen.
The kitchen was a good size.
The whole flat was done up really nicely on the inside.
And it was, you could tell, like she had lived there
for a while because she just kind of,
everything looked really fresh and clean.
The problem was that the living room
and the bedroom were just a little bit too small for me.
After this flat, I was supposed to go see another one,
and then as I was like five minutes
from the flat to go see it,
and I had been so excited for this flat,
the agent called me and said,
"The landlord has told me
"that they've accepted another offer."
So that was kind of a bummer, but that is how this goes.
Okay, fast forward to next week,
I have a couple more viewings booked in.
And at this point I had seen a bunch of properties,
a couple also that I haven't even talked about,
because I didn't get videos, or they just weren't worth it.
I was at that point
where I was like tired of viewing properties,
getting discouraged.
They had announced that the lockdowns
were going to start lifting,
so I knew that demand for the areas
that I was looking at was going to increase significantly,
and I was worried. I'd kind of like missed that point
of getting those better deals.
But I found a couple of properties
that looked really great OpenRent,
so I booked to go see them on the same day.
So this is flat five.
It was actually in the same building
as one of the other flats that I've looked at,
and it was a building that I really quite liked,
so I was excited to go see it.
And when I did, I was really happy with it.
It was the same layout.
It had two closets,
a nice view from the teeny little balcony.
There was a dishwasher, very secure building.
The couple of things I wasn't keen on
was I thought the price was a little bit high,
and also it didn't have high ceilings,
which obviously everybody loves high ceilings,
especially in a small flat.
And the final flat that I saw, flat six,
I was quite surprised at how spacious the flat was.
It only had a little bit of built-in storage,
so I was going to have to add wardrobes
and different things, different types of furniture
to add storage, but it had really good space.
This sounds like a weird thing to be excited about,
but there was a door to a balcony on one side,
but then also on the other side of the flat in the kitchen,
there was also a window that gets a ton,
or it would get a ton of light,
which means that flat is very bright during the day,
which is great for me,
and it makes it feel more spacious having that extra window.
Also, I found out it's pet friendly,
which is interesting for the future.
And the location was really good.
Oh, and the price was really good too.
Those were all the flats I saw.
Can you guess which ones I chose or made an offer on?
I will tell you, obviously.
I made an offer on flat one despite the mess,
but I completely low-balled it
because of the state of the flat,
and it had been on the market for awhile.
My low-ball offer had been rejected,
then I bumped it up a bit,
but it was still under asking, that was rejected,
and then eventually it was off the market.
And I was kind of bummed
because after a couple of weeks, I was like,
"Oh, I actually would have paid for full price for that."
So I was a bit disappointed,
but then I offered on flat number five,
and that offer was accepted.
I actually offered below asking, and that was accepted,
and this flat is a bit better than the other one,
so I'm happy I ended up waiting
and going for the one that ended up getting.
I'm filming this less than a week
before I'll be moving there.
I feel really happy
because this is gonna be the first place
that I've lived in on my own.
The last couple of years, as some of you know,
have been extremely difficult for me,
and I feel like getting this flat
on my own is going to be a fresh new start.
Not having to deal with housemates,
and just to be able to have that independence
of doing honestly whatever the (beep) I want with the place.
After living in house shares for almost two years,
I'm like, ugh.
If you're still in the house share situation,
you'll get there, I promise I was there too.
You will get there.
Okay, so for that freebie, if you're moving to London,
I have a free moving to London checklist,
and it has everything that you need to do
before you move from abroad,
and after you actually get to London.
So you make sure you cover all your bases
for getting you set up here,
and you can get that for free
by clicking the link popping up in the corner
or in the description box of the video.
This video is part of my back to London series,
where I show you my big move back to London
into my own place.
You can click one of the boxes popping up here
to watch another video in the series.
See you in the next one.