The "moving house" ordeal

We had a nightmare of a move, or what the Brits call "moving house." We thought it would be simple enough to find a new flat in London....boy were we wrong. It's a very long story. Basically, we thought we had found a place, and the landlord changed terms in the contract, and we ended up homeless for almost 2 weeks.

In London, the process for renting a flat is more like buying a house. You work with agents to see flats in your criteria (we probably saw about 40 by the time it was over) and then you have to put in an offer. You offer the terms such as price, length of contract, furnished/unfurnished, etc, etc. And it's competitive, as the good flats (decent sized, newer remodels in central location) tend to go really fast.

We had been searching while still in Oxford, with trips back and forth to London - sometimes Kent and I together and sometimes separately. We thought we had nailed down a place in Soho, walking distance to both of our offices and in the middle of the theater district. After putting in the offer, the landlord accepted (so we thought). We weren't quite sure about the hustle and bustle of the area and wanted to check out the neighborhood before committing long-term, so we insisted on a 6-month break clause in the contract (which is pretty standard here anyway). We never saw a contract, and were supposed to get keys each day. We kept hearing "you can move in tomorrow." We finally went down to our agent's office and sat with him while he talked to this landlord. The landlord claimed to never have heard about the break clause. It was a deal breaker - luckily our agent was holding the money we had already given, so we got the money back and went to look at other properties. That was a Friday, and on Saturday we saw a big (relatively, for London) and newly remodeled 2BR in a totally different neighborhood. We acted fast and said we would take it! We finally were able to move in the following Wednesday.....

All the while, all of our belongings were in a moving van parked on the streets of London. Some super nice friends let us stay with them the entire time, luckily!

So that's the story in a nutshell. Lots of anxiety, but in the end it was a blessing in disguise. We would have been stuck with a terrible landlord in Soho, and our new neighborhood and landlord are 10 times better! More to come soon on the new flat..........