The new flat

When I first arrived in Essex in February I was fortunate that I could stay with a work colleague so I was able to check out the area and take my time in finding a place to live. A six month lease is standard, so I decided to try to find a furnished flat in the area from the office for six months and then to give further thought to the topic after that, once I had a better idea of where I wanted to live.

When I lived in Germany, renting a flat was easy. In the tiny town of B one looks in the newspaper or on the bulletin board at the office; to accept a flat one signs a contract and puts down a deposit of first and last month's rent. Perhaps because it was a small town, it was rather uncomplicated. I had no credit, reference or employment check. I signed on the dotted line and moved in.

Upon arriving in the UK I found out that it was a little harder to rent a flat.
1. I needed a landlord reference. My very nice landlady spoke absolutely no English, at all.
2. Because I had no credit history in the UK, I would be forced to pay the entire six month lease up front.

The other option would have been to try to find a sublet or a room in a private house that would perhaps be less stringent about the above standards. I found an interesting place in the center of town, furnished and with parking and all utilities excluding television and internet, which would have come to the princely sum of 5000 GBP. I had decided to move forward with it, but we ran into a bit of a snafu in that they needed to independently collect the reference of my German landlady but no one on staff spoke German. (sigh.)

Around this the amazing thought of 'something is easier in Germany than in the UK' crossed my head. While I was waiting for them to find a German speaker, I became curious and looked at how much it would cost to buy a place in the building where I would be renting. (too much!) I looked up how much the flat I would be renting had been purchased for (over 200k, ouch!). On a whim, I started to look through the real estate ads online to see what I would be able to afford when the time came.

My requirements are not necessarily many, but they are very specific and non-negotiable. I've had the same ones for about five years or so:
1. Must not be on the ground floor.
2. Must get a lot of light-->even more important with the UK rainy days :-(
3. Must have a balcony or somewhere for me to grow things.

I don't think it's so much to ask for. ;-) One particular flat caught my eye, so I decided to pop over and see it while I was waiting on the rental option. It was 2,5 years old, in a 're-developing' part of downtown, about 10 minutes walk from the main train and bus stations.

What really caught my eye was that it was:
1. Top floor (4th floor of a four story building, three flats per floor)

2. Complete floor to ceiling glass wall in the bedroom and living room, facing West, glass door on the other side of the living room facing East. In essence, my living room will be bathed in sunlight (as sunny as my corner of Essex gets!) the entire day.

3. The absolute selling point: the glass toward the West is actually a roof terrace which is larger than the bedroom. There is a door from the bedroom and the living room leading onto the back terrace. The glass door toward the East is to the front roof terrace. I will have two roof terraces which will be perfect environments for growing all my outdoor veg. Lord knows there's so little sunny and short summers in the UK so I need every bit of help I can get. The architecture here isn't really given to large balconies or roof terraces for that matter. Perhaps it's the weather or maybe just the style. Where would you like your coffee when you visit—on the morning terrace or the evening terrace? ;-)

The place had been on the market for nine months and dropped twice in price. I could see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Specifically:

1. There is no parking included with the place. That's the biggest negative I can come up with, but there is free parking hidden around town, or parking is free in front from 6 PM – 8 AM, or I can leave the car at the office during the week. It's 2.03 miles to the office, a perfect 'Heather length' walk twice a day.
Sidenote: I'm not sure why the town approves flats to be built without parking as the parking situation in downtown is tight, or why they don't get their act together and put in more lots to make more revenue for the town.

2. It's four flights up, without an elevator.

3. The ground floor is under the application process to be a restaurant serving alcohol. I can see if you were in the second floor flats, this would be an annoyance, especially when the bars and restaurants have gone smoke-free and everyone must go outside, i.e. below your balcony, to smoke. At the 4th floor level, I'm not expecting a problem, especially as I expect to be more toward the back terrace in the evenings as that will be the sunny side. In addition, the front terrace is slightly recessed from the 3 beneath it, not straight in line with them (I think this is for the overall building look.) It means that there is another noise buffer in that the noise must go up and then inward to reach here, not just straight up. Plus I see the convenience factor of having a restaurant below. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point on that one...

4. It is a flat in a building with maintenance etc charges as opposed to a house which has less charges.

5. The space is small and a little quirky. I instantly fell in love with it, but I could see how it would not resonate well with a lot of people. Specifically, the roof terraces are a large part of the area, and therefore mainly 'unusable' space during the colder months. I'm guessing that my living space is decreased by about one-third during the cold and wet months. Personally I prefer small living space as it's easier to keep in order and less expensive to heat.

A few things played in my favor here which told me this was the right thing to do.

I asked to be allowed to visit again, but at an evening instead of during the day when nearby offices were open. I wanted to see how the place felt then. For perspective, I brought along a work colleague who tends to have very different opinions than me, to hear what he would see in it--nothing negative.

I was coming to the table as a cash buyer. In a backhanded way, I was blessed in that I came of working age in an IT job during the late 90's, although it didn't seem so at the time. I did consulting for a while living in hotel rooms and visiting friends on company paid tickets home on the weekends. The job market was on its way up as I came into the system but I arrived with a poor student mentality and student loans. When I took a permanent job I took a room in a shared house and saved my pennies for a few years. After a few years, into the 2000's when I could have qualified for a mortgage based on having a solid income and some work history and a little savings, I was living in the San Francisco Bay area where I was completely priced out of the market as the bubble had yet to burst.

I didn't want to be tied down anyway to California and jumped when I had the chance to come to Europe. For three years I lived the expat life in company paid (although taxable to me) housing. Later, when I finally got dumped off the expat gravy train I took the smallest solo place I could find in the tiny town of B and furnished it with trash-picked furniture. Was the goal to save money and live as cheaply as possible? No, the goal was to avoid having to 1. go to Ikea in DE, the place was a madhouse, and 2. I never liked having to put together the flat pack stuff in any event and 3. I knew DE was a launchpad to another area, so I saw no reason to really invest in anything which probably couldn't come along (financially or emotionally).

As a US citizen with no UK credit history, I wouldn't have qualified for a mortgage, so I could only buy something which fell within my cash payable means. Heck, the bank won't even give me a checkbook under my piddling 'passport' account. I must prove my financial worthiness for one year before I am allowed a checkbook or an interest bearing account. I'm rather not impressed with those rules, but it's all part of the expat game.

The other benefit of this flat is that my corner of Essex is considered an affordable commuter city into London. If I ever need to get a new job and want to stay with my current profession, I'll need to do it in the city—there just aren't similar jobs here in Essex. So if I had to, I could live without a car, being within walking distance to the main station which goes into London. In addition, that serves to make the flat rentable should I ever want to leave it.

So I put in a bid on the flat. I realized they had dropped the price twice, but I went under the asking price anyway. We hemmed and hawed back and forth as I could see online their original purchase price 2,5 years ago, so I knew they were losing money. They had a price floor they didn't want to go below, their psychological breaking point. Having recently left Germany and gone through the hassle of selling off all of my furniture and remembering what it was like to have to buy all of that stuff, I agreed to their number, if they would leave all major pieces of furniture such as the bed, sofas, wardrobe, patio furniture etc. There was no way I want to live through another Ikea shopping trip, schlepping up the four flights of stairs and then assembly session. They accepted.

Good thing as getting the German reference was still not progressing after two weeks, so I dropped out of that one and long term onto my colleague's sofa for the duration of this adventure. As we were heading into summer I knew I could pitch the tent as needed, as well as that some business travel would be squeezed in. (Memo to self: I'm almost too old to be slumming it for 100 days on someone's sofa. Almost. ;-))

So through the stages of house surveying, reviewing, etc. we went. I got annoyed as the process was taking too long and ended up pulling out of the process late in the game. An intentional bluff? No, just annoyance. They invited me to make a lower bid as it was the 11th hour and they didn't want to start over. Unintentionally I picked up a small discount there and was back in the game.
I transferred the first 40% of the purchase price on Tuesday. The last 60% was winging over (or does it go under?) the Atlantic Thursday night, where it arrived on Friday. It will be sent over to the sellers tomorrow for the keys to come over to me on Friday.

After 30 some years of life, I finally became a flat owner for the first time, yet not in the US. Go figure. Curious for a quick view? These are the photos I took when I was seeing it for the first time, so it's their decor. Better ones will come once I am there and unpacked...

only the sofa in this photo stays. will take better photos of the view from the terrace once there. this side faces the downtown rooftops.


not my tv either ;-)

where the vegetarian magic will happen:

not sure i like the white bedding look they had, although it does add to the brightness factor. My Dark blue German bedding did come along fortunately. :-)