House Hunting in Manchester

House hunting can be a nightmare anywhere. More so in a city where you just landed a week ago. Though in this era of Internet, the World has become small, but, yet no one on the Internet can provide you wisdom regarding house hunting.

The hunt started sometime back as soon as I came to know that I might be going to work in Irlam near Manchester, and that might have to stay there for more than a year. The following are the points that I gathered about Manchester and its suburbs:

• Manchester City Centre is good to stay, but expensive like any other big city centre.
• Irlam is an industrial town and staying there will be very boring and might get frustrating. This was confirmed to be true the first day at work.
• There are some shady areas like Moss side which should be avoided.
• Rusholme and Longsight are full of South Asians, might be good for some.
• Chorlton is a hip area with lots of supermarkets and pubs. It is more of a laid back area.
• Didsbury is a little high class, with upmarket houses and hence the rents are higher.

After deciding on a lot of factors like time to travel to work and access to entertainment, I decided on Chorlton. And thus my search started.

I was looking for rooms in a shared house to start with as I did not want to go into the one year contract terms for complete houses as well as the internet connection. That limited my search to sites like gumtree.com and easyroommate.com.

The first house I looked was being shared by the owner, a lady, and she had one room to spare. It was nice and homely and little did I know that it was the best that I was getting. Me, being naïve into this house sharing culture, waited and saw some other houses shown by the agents. Not only the houses were very revolting to look, but the rents were higher too. By the time I confirmed with the lady, that room was taken.

I felt very sad at my own stupidity but then I forgave myself saying that this was my first time. And so I booked the next room which was more or less ok. It has not been ready yet as the window needs to be fixed and they need to clean the room and the oven (which I requested).

As I am waiting in anticipation for the room to get ready, I am also waiting for the experience of a house share. And I am looking forward to it.