House Horror

The last few months have been stressful, annoying and exhausting for one reason; finding a house to rent. It’s an issue many people around me have found themselves stuck in. Why would it be so difficult for post- graduates to find a house?

I fell in love with Newcastle during my university years and after I graduated I had a choice. Either move back in with my family in a housing estate with minimal job opportunities and give up my freedom or stay in the city and live with friends, struggle for a couple years until I get comfortable in a career. Of course I picked the later, for the plot.

Long story short

I’ve already got a flat, one that I intended on living in for at least another year until two flatmates decided to drop out of the tenancy. Me and my other flatmate then quickly found two friends to replace them however, the agency wouldn’t allow them as they weren’t students. We also aren’t students and yet we’ve been living there for a whole year. Confusing, I know. They said if we could find two tenants were students we could stay, then they changed their minds again and decided the whole property is now student only. Therefore, even though we signed all the documents to stay another year, we have been forced to leave by the end of September. We suspect it’s due to the law change surrounding renters right and doing what they can to gain more money in this expensive world. Surely it’ll be easy enough to find a new house… wrong!

Mould, Damp, and More Mould

At this point, we must have seen about twenty different properties. The first few were in bad condition, completely different from the photos we had seen online. The filth people let their living spaces get to shocked us all. Dirt can be cleaned but what can't be fixed with a mop is mouldy bathrooms and damp walls. Then a reoccurring problem hit us; the Fourth bedroom was always the smallest, with many properties only being able to fit a single bed in there. We saw one in which it couldn't even fit a wardrobe. Why are these properties marketed as a four bed house in the first place?

None of us could fit our things into such a cramped space and so we continued our search. We did find a beautiful property in perfect condition and decent price- success had struck! It was too good to be true and someone beat us to the deposit. This did not dampen our optimism as it was still early in our search.

A screenshot from a video we took when viewing a property.

Another screenshot from a video we took when viewing a different property.

Are landlords really looking after properties if these are the conditions they leave them in?

Are Students Always to Blame?

Many properties we have viewed have been open to students and professionals. From empty beer bottles, birthday banners and hygiene levels we could differentiate which type were staying there. Yes, students are notoriously messy, but can you blame them? They’re figuring out how to live without parental supervision for the first couple of years. They’re bound to make disturbances, break a washing machine, stain a few carpets. Landlords know this. There’s always some sort of online portal they can log their damages on, but how often does the company or landlord carry out checks for mould, damp and other dangers? I’m no expert, but there’s definitely laws for up keeping a rental property. If the properties were really looked after, mould would be spotted straight away and dealt with, the source of leaks would be fixed, ceilings plastered and painted. From what we’ve seen, this is not the case and well looked after houses or flats are a minority, getting snatched up instantly.

Death of Communication

Last week we found a house we deemed fit for the four of us to live in. We got greeted by a list of touch ups the agency had planned to do before we would move in which showed a level of care we were suprised to see. Within four hours of viewing it, we filled out forms and submitted passports before five p.m. We could relax, the next step was to hand over a deposit and the property would be hours. The search was complete! The next day we awoke to shocking news. Someone had already submitted their deposit through another person within the agency. The person handling our application was very apologetic about how they were not informed of this sooner. Had we known someone else was interested, we would have moved even faster and not feel so disappointed in the result. Our viewing and application was therefore pointless, a waste of time. This has led to one person in our search to drop out, move home and save for their own place. Hopefully, the three of us will have better luck.

Conclusion

The search is still on! We have a list of three bed properties to view this week and we feel optimistic that we will find our place very shortly. It’s been a long few months, but we have not been defeated.

I would like to hear from all of you! Have you had a similar experience in finding a house to rent? Did you move back home after university? Please discuss in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.