The Great London Flat Hunt - flat hunting as a student (tours & prices)

Okay, don't laugh, but when I first started making this video, I thought it was going to be making like a house hunters themed, like, see a few flats, put an offer, get a flat. Everything's easy and breezy. Um, that's not the case. If you've ever flat hunted in London, then you'll understand. In reality, we ended up seeing over 20 places, and we put an offer on five and got rejected from all five, and then a plot twist happened, which I'll tell you about. Um, and on top of that, we also reached out to 30 places that just never got back to us. So that's fine. I am filming this for my new flat, which I love. So it has a happy ending, but it is rough out there flat hunting in London. So I'm going to talk you through my experience and show you some flats and we'll, we'll just, we'll get through this together. I do have notes because this is a lot to remember. So I will be looking at them. So for some background, my two flatmates and I, we lived together in the student accommodations in Greenwich, which is in Southeast London. And since we spent so much time in that area, we wanted to kind of mix it up. So we were really looking at like North London, West London, not so much like Southeast London and not really East London because we, I feel like we spent a lot of time there. We just kind of wanted to have a different experience. Our very max budget for three bedrooms was 2,400 a month. Uh, ideally we were hoping to spend less than that, but it doesn't always work out like that. Our must-haves were a good area. We wanted to be well connected to shops and tubes and buses and everything. We wanted to have similar sized bedrooms and we wanted to have a common area other than the kitchen. We didn't really feel like this was an unreasonable expectation, but with our budget and the fact that we're students with no full-time income, it was a lot more difficult than anticipated. So let me take you back to April 28th and let the flat hunt begin. I'm about to go to my first flat viewing in London, which is insane. At this point, we were actually looking for a four bedroom, but our friend's circumstances changed. So we changed to a three bedroom after viewing this one, but I wanted to include it because it was the first one that we saw. This one was in West Hampstead. It was 3,000, four bedroom, no common area, and it was being renovated when we saw it. So we couldn't really see the full picture of it, but we did get to meet the landlord and he seemed like really nice and it seemed like they were going to be putting a lot of nice finishing touches on the flat. But ultimately, we decided not to go with it, obviously, because it was four bedrooms and we couldn't afford it as three people and there was no common area. A week later, on May 5th, we viewed our first three bedroom and actually I was late to the viewing because of a delay on the district line and only Rachel got to see it. And it was nice. We liked the area. It was in Southwest London, but one of the rooms was significantly smaller than the other two, not really a livable room. So we had to pass on it. The very next day, we viewed three flats. Okay, things started moving. We're going to three viewings today. Hopefully, I'll be able to take you along for all of them. We're very hopeful about the ones today. One was in Battersea. It was 1997 and it was an old council flat, which is common in London, but it was really not very nice. I think the bedrooms are all about the same size, which is nice. We also viewed one in White City that is near Shepherd's Bush area and it was just really grubby, but the rooms were all the same size, so that's good. Then we saw one in East Putney and we really, really liked it. The decor wasn't ideal. The kitchen was kind of ugly, but we liked everything else. This is the smallest. Oh, it's the smallest. It's still, I feel like, double bed. Yeah. So we put in an offer at asking price and also, since we're students and we don't have full-time income, we have to offer, and we don't have guarantors in the UK, we had to offer six months upfront. Oh, that's sinking. A sad update. It's Monday morning and we put in our offer, but someone beat us to it. They put in their offer on Friday. Now we know how fast it moves, so we're going to just have to be faster next time. We saw the place on a Friday evening and then we put in an offer first thing Monday morning. They already had an offer and they already accepted it. I don't know. I don't know. At this point, we were pretty sad, but we still felt optimistic because we were like, okay, now we know how quickly it moves. We'll be ready for next time. A few days later on May 10th, we saw three more places. And by the way, these places are not near each other. Like this is an all day event trying to get everywhere. It's my last day in London for a bit. I'm going to visit home for a month. And then we move eight days after I get back, which means if we don't find a place today, I'll be moving in somewhere that I've never seen in person before, which is fine. Cause I actually really trust the opinions of my other flatmates. So I'm fine with it, but it would be really nice to get it sorted. So we don't have to worry about it when we come back. But yeah, I'll take you along for the viewings today. We started in Earlsfield and this place was listed at 1600 and we get there. It's a mob. There's like a thousand people trying to view this little place. And I think it was just because it was listed for so cheap that people were just like flocking. And I guess they scheduled them all at the same time. Anyway, we had to wait for a long time before we even got to go in and it was not nice. Then we went to a viewing in St. John's wood, which I had really high hopes for. It was over budget or at the top of the budget. It was 2400, but it's really close to like little Venice. And I'm just like, I don't know. A lot of the area is just really beautiful, but the area around the tube station that we would have to get to the flat was not super nice. It was very busy, very, very busy road, really loud. And so we ended up seeing the place, but we didn't love it. And it wasn't worth spending that much money on to us. All right. So just through here, just right here, you have a little bit of a seat. Next, we went up to Wilson green and we saw a place that was listed at 1950. And I love this flat. It had a bay window, which is like my actual dream in life is to have one. And that was enough to sell me on it. I love that window. There was a little bit of disparity in the rooms. One of the rooms had a window that faced a wall. It did still get some light, but it wasn't necessarily ideal. So we had to kind of talk through that. We ended up deciding to put an offer on it. We offer 2100, which is above asking six months up front. And we didn't ask for any, anything additional. And once again, our offer was not accepted. And this was annoying because they didn't give us a reason. They just said that the landlord decided to move forward with another offer. So it's not even like you can course correct. You're just like floating and you're like, I don't know why they rejected us. And then I had to go home. I had a month long trip home planned. At the time that I planned it, I thought we would already have a flat. So I didn't think it was going to be a big deal. But my flatmates took over the viewings and they saw a lot of places. Welcome home. My mom would love this place. I'm just going to walk you through the ones that we actually liked and put an offer on. The next offer was May 23rd. And we put an offer on a place in Clapham. It was modern inside, close to the tube, nice size bedrooms. And we liked Clapham, the area in general. The building was dated, but we really liked the place. I saw it over FaceTime or yeah, I saw it over FaceTime. And so we decided to put an offer in. We didn't hear back for several days, but again, our offer was declined. May 25th, we view a place in Southwest London, like near Wandsworth. It was next to a tube, which was kind of like earlier in the process that would have been a deal-breaker. But it's close to a train, so we were like, you know, not a deal-breaker. Also, the landlord had decided to paint one of the rooms red, which is just such a confusing choice. And it wasn't fully furnished, so the letting agent told us that we could put an offer in and ask for furniture to be put in. And so that's what we ended up doing. We definitely weren't 100% sold on this place, but since we could request furniture, we decided to request furniture, put in an offer £100 below asking, and see what would happen. And fair enough, the landlord decided to go with someone that put in an offer at asking and did not ask for furniture. So we moved on. My flatmates continued to see more flats, and meanwhile, I'm still in America, so I don't know what's going on. Then May 31st, they see a flat in Shepherd's Bush, which is really near the tube station. It wasn't perfect inside, but they were getting some sort of, like, renovation done to the kitchen, which was going to make it a little bit nicer. And since it was so conveniently located, we did put in an offer above asking. We offered £22.50 and asking was £21.97. And then we waited to hear back. So at this point, it's June. We have to be out of our flat in a little over two weeks, and we have nowhere to live. We're still waiting to hear back from the Shepherd's Bush place, but we were not feeling very hopeful about it. And then out of the clear blue sky, we get a text from the letting agent that showed us the place near Wandsworth. And she says the landlord has been having some second thoughts about the people that she decided to go with, and I really liked you guys, so I told her that she should reconsider and think about accepting your offer. She said we would need to put in an offer at asking, but that the place would be ours and the landlord would put in furniture if we wanted to go forward with it. We were seriously shocked and elated because at this point, we were honestly so desperate. We started moving forward with everything, and we were still really nervous because we were like, this could be pulled out from under our feet at any moment. And then about a week later, our paperwork went through, we were given a move-in day, and here we are. Also, we did find out that we did not get the Shepherd's Bush place, in case you're wondering. Everything has worked out so perfectly. I told you that we weren't sold on this flat, but after moving in, we love it here. And everything just worked out so perfectly. I'm very thankful. And so we've since moved in, obviously. The next video that you'll see is a move-in vlog. That was not very fun, and it was a little bit traumatic, so I haven't edited it together yet, but it'll be a fun video. And yeah, this has seriously just been the best spot, and I'm really happy with where we've ended up. But again, this was not the most fun experience. So thanks for sticking with me through this video. I know that it was a lot, but I just want to be really real about this process in case you are also looking for a flat in London, because it is not easy. It is so difficult and time-consuming, but I think everything works out how it's supposed to. So good luck if you're looking. I'll be wishing you the best. And let me know if you have any questions down below. I'll be happy to answer anything that you have. And thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye!