We’re now 3 weeks into our potentially years-long London experience; Nazma has started her tepid wade back into the workforce; and I’m on the computer for what feels like 26 hours a day—shirtless and deadbeat, some would say. I would protest, however, that I’m actually neck-deep in rental listings, looking for that perfect (or at least tolerable) flat. Haven’t even stopped to blog, until now.

Several points to make this search interesting:

• We are looking for places close to Nazma’s office in the City. That means a half-hour commute max, but still close enough to the action that if we want to pop out, there’s a decent high-street close by, or at least a very short ride to said action.
• Given the recent spree of knife-related crime in London, we’d prefer to be not stabbed coming out of our building. Avoiding flaming jeeps is another priority, so proximity to airports is out. A “safe” neighbourhood it is, then.
• Short of challenging a Aussie backpacker-cum-waiter to a fight-to-the-death, the entire market for flats below £250/week is off-limits. Yes, that’s CAD$530 a week. As such, we’ve set ourselves an upper limit of £350/week for a 2-bedroom flat, or £300/week for a 1-bed.
• There’s a little thing here in the UK called council tax, which is like property tax, except that the tenant pays it. That means coughing up an extra £800-1600 a year. That’s some pricey garbage removal.
• Distances in England are tiny; this was something I first noticed when reading The Lord of the Rings and thinking that Frodo and crew didn’t really have to travel very far to get into all kinds of hobbity trouble. That and you can practically see Sauron’s big eye from Minas Tirith. Anyway, all this to say that prices can change drastically if you walk even 5 mins over to the next street. A “desirable” road can be £50 more than the same flat a block over. Which is great but it makes second-guessing-yourself by far the greatest hurdle.
• Trolling the photoless by-owner classifieds then is pretty uninformative and maddening. The greatest tool (and worst temptation) then, is to retain an estate agent: like realtors that only deal with rentals. It seems like they get access to the nicer properties, short of you getting lucky with the classifieds. But what a dirty experience: they’re usually males between 18 and 22, smooth-and-fast-talking to the point of incoherence, and generally the slimiest folks you’ll meet. Follow one in his wide-pinstriped suit and you’ll run into his trail of insincerity like a lightcycle from Tron.

  Despite this, we’ve already done so, but luckily they’re so flaky themselves that you can shake them easily. For instance, we went out for a viewing with one, from a firm that’s apparently been under attack in the news for inflating prices and pocketing the excess. Nice start. Some beautiful places he showed us, though. We looked through 4 places and booked another round of viewings with him, but we still played it pretty cool. He should have smelled money, but sure enough, we haven’t heard from him since. No follow-up, no promised appointment. Must have hooked bigger, easier fish: he’s passed on our details to some other dude, who booked me for a showing today only to phone this morning and change it to next week.

In the meantime, there are apparently as many estate agencies as there are properties in London. I’ve been trying to sift through a shortlist of 6 agencies and their listings and I’ve discovered another 6 that I’ll have to contact. There’s no question we’re definitely spoiled for choice; just a lot of sharks circling us as we look for that one pearl in the open sea that is the London rentals market.