Finding your dream home is like internet dating...without the feel good factor

I will start with the quick overview of the situation to ease you into the story; it all started with a mini break down nearing the 40th birthday. The lovely, tiny house I owned was still lovely but sadly I felt it was no longer offering me what I needed - peace and tranquility. Won't bore you with details here although I could but in a nutshell, my better half and I had our eye on Wanstead, a lovely and leafy area of east London, zone 4 on the Central line. Our reasons were these; normal people wandering the streets, multitudes of lovely shops that sell good coffee and wonderful pastries and a Provender, great little restaurant where Polish waiter makes an effort to sound French and the food is divine. Oh...and lack of chicken bones on the pavement, something we came to really appreciated having moved from slightly uncivilised Newham. 

I had my eye on a flat in a 1930s building...lovely large rooms, charming fireplace and a hallway that reminded me of old flats back home (I am from foreign land, as my friend Emma would say). We made an offer and were set. We also met a lovely estate agent who was dealing with the sale of our house and the purchase of the flat. The day we put the offer in, my hubby and I sat in the Wanstead pub and excitedly projected what our new life will be like. Looking back at that memory is like re watching Sex and the city boxset where Carrie leaves Mr Big in the first season because she wants someone who can commit. When you watch it for the first time you end up thinking 'you go girl' but when you are seeing it for the sixth time, you have tears in your eyes because now you are wiser and, having seen all six seasons, you know she will never love anyone else, she will repeatedly come back to him and then leave him time and time again, she will cheat on other people with him, she will compromise, she will cry...no, sob, she will be broken hearted and in that episode after Mr. Big's heart surgery, where he has a moment and asks her; "What are we doing?" and means 'we should be together'...but then the next morning he forgets it all conveniently, she accepts it with bittersweet apathy...when you know that happens, you never see that first break up in the same way. Instead of filling you with quiet empowerment, it fills you with poignant, heart wrenching despair.  

That flat fell through mid sale and I won't go into much detail and we decided to rent for a while because we did not want to inconvenience our buyer and because everyone was telling us this was a smart move, then we will be ready to pounce, chain free, with a large deposit on the house of our dreams. Those first days when I hunted for a flat in Wanstead, it never occurred to me that the high prices in Wanstead and the amount of estate agents on a relatively short high street were highly correlated. I remember going to see a flat no bigger than my Orla Kiely Mathilda bag with a pretty dire decor and a cerise carpet so worn that it resembled a much loved teddy bear that has been hugged for far too long and laughing at the asking price. The estate agent looked at me and said; "They can ask those prices because things always sell."  I didn't know how these words will haunt me then...

I am no longer laughing. It has been close to 6 months and I have seen some pretty bad things. Flats without any heating, flats with kitchens from the fifties, flats with bathroom from the sixties which still stands, albeit barely... a flat where some strange man, who had a grandiose mirror opposite his bed and a wet room that resembled the worst that NHS service has to offer, died doing DIY (this is my conclusion upon seeing the exposed electrical wires in the sitting room and having been told that he died suddenly), a flat which belonged to a strange man with a water bed, 50 leather jackets and his own way of calculating the value of his flat, the flat that smelt of urine, the flat with damp problem so bad you don't need a surveyor to tell you that, the flat where the rooms were so small that people can walk only in a single file...to a flat we really liked and have booked to see only to be told a day later that an investor has snapped it up. They all sold.

What I have realised, somewhat bittersweetly, in the time we have been renting in Wanstead, patiently waiting to unpack our pictures and books and shoes in the new place we would buy...is that Wanstead is in the league of its own. It has a charming English feel to it, which has been lost in London, it has great schools, lakes, swans, woods, old buildings with charming features, lots of trees, picturesque high street, good restaurants, lovely opticians, more than awesome dentist called Alex, who by the way could also work as a Calvin Cline model, a pharmacy stocking Vichy stuff, an old post office lady who can do additions quickly and accurately without a calculator, great green grocer, a friendly butcher...oh and about 20 estate agents who all do very well and I know most of them by the first name now.  I also realised that all the things we have been told...that buyers are kings in the current economy, that having a large deposit, no chain etc. is like having the holy grail and that it won't be long before we will find that amazing home for us, was simply not true. It may be true in another area but it is slowly dawning on me that in Wanstead we are like a homecoming queen from a very small rural town, loved, admired, envied, carefree and innocent...who suddenly finds herself in the big city where she is a big nobody. And that feeling is so unpleasant and made worse by the never ending longing to finally be able to buy the blinds we want, have a dishwasher again and to hang our pictures. 

At the worst of the moments, instead of getting drunk (as I don't drink), I sit with packets of Randoms and a finger on the Rightmove and I do one thing Phil and Kirsty will urge you not to do; I browse way above our budget. And I browse past sold prices. These two are the most harmful things one can do and this is why: the houses above our budget will always be unattainable and looking at them is like fantasising that Karate Kid (my first love) or Morrissey (my second) will somehow bump into you and in that one chance encounter realise you are so divine and special that love will blossom. The fact they are famous and you are no one special just adds to the story...as they crave the girl next door (they always did in my head), the ordinary girl, a leo for that matter... Out of that one starts to have irrational thoughts such as spending money on lottery or ever worse, logging onto betting sites and playing demo roulette in order to see if there is money to be made if one plays for real. There never is... To dreaming about some distant relative, one that you didn't even know you had, dying (this idea came to me after watching Heir hunters) and leaving you £50.000 or £70.000 as this amount would make a huge difference in attaining that dream flat in Wanstead. 

Looking at the houses that sold is harmful in a different way...you see the prices and you know that some of them were sold to investors under the table, quietly emailed by the few estate agents who love quick and uncomplicated sales of properties described as 'investment opportunity' or 'a place to really put you stamp on'...which sell for a very nice price...or you see houses that sold in a hurry due to broken chains etc...and you want to weep because the asking prices are ridiculously high and are in no way a reflection of a true value or past sold prices. Then you get defiant and you think that this discrepancy between asking prices and sold prices is down to making a reasonable offer... so you try that. I did, but was laughed at... that was a flat where the kitchen had no floor and the cabinets were falling off the walls. It needed £40.000 spent on it to bring it to a liveable condition...even still, they laughed at me...and later they sold it. 

This is the story so far... and tomorrow another viewing, another mini heartbreak. Oh and I am still to tell you about the flat with a barb wire garden and a flat with a view...but that is now another mini saga so stay tuned.