Moving Home......

I have been looking at houses now for much of the past week or so with Catherine and it looks like we have chosen the area of Withington to live. With my current house contract due to run out on the 31st of this month and Catherine due to start her new job on the 16th, it is a convenient time to move and to choose somewhere bigger.

Living in Chorlton has been good but its a bit quiet in terms of who i know and much of my activities in Manchester circulate further east. The buses from Withington are excellent as they get the Fallowfield student buses which go every few minutes, but it doesn't retain the student stigma of Fallowfield, more so the upmarket area of Didsbury the same distance the other way. So convenient for town, friends and a good mix of places nearby to cater for all my 'moods' makes it ideal. It's also technically closer to work (in Openshaw) but in terms of time to get there it is much the same due to the odd road systems and the traffic in Longsight. Finding a quick way through is a small challenge over the coming weeks!

We've looked at around 10 houses altogether including some in Chorlton and Salford before we chose Withington but at the start of the week we made our decision and subsequently focused our efforts there seeing at least 5 properties. The one we have gone for is £650 rent a month (split between 2 is much cheaper than my current £375 for 1) and we actually saw it on Tuesday night with the tennants showing us round. Tennants being the 'salespeople' is certainly a big plus as they are under no pressure to lie and have the actual experience of living in the property. As they hadn't had any more viewings booked until next week so far, we saw it an educated risk to leave it one more day and look round the 4 we had planned on Wednesday (yesterday), as the tennant would have to have been given at least 24 hours notice prior to a viewing so we at east knew we had that.

Some of the properties came close, you can see that it is very competitive in this area as they were all at generally a good standard so it was the little things that made the winner the winner. The agency fees were paid today, a rip off at £200 as they aren't even managing the property, they are just advertising it but we felt we had to really. All of our viewings are with agencies as we don't know any landlords and £100 each is about average :(.

We will see how the move will come along in the next few weeks as the tennants move out on the 28th and we need to get the paperwork sorted! Catherine has decided to film some bits of it too which will be interesting......

.....oh yeah i think i forgot to say, its a 2 bedroom flat!