Cambridge University being so divorced from actual reality, I have never actually done anything which the majority of the world would term "moving out". I lived in halls for three years. So, flat-hunting is a totally new concept to me, and one I'm having to learn as I go. On the advice of a friend of mine who had moved recently I signed up on flatshare.com and easyroommate.com and started browsing, narrowing down choices. When you do this, you get asked how much money you are willing to pay per week/month. Because I didn't want to constrain my options too far I put a fairly high number, an upper limit estimate, so that everything would get listed and I'd be able to pick and choose based on that. Then, I was phoned by someone - let's call her R (I'm trying to anonymise my blog a little, I'm still a little unsure how far to take this though) who was also looking for accommodation in Winchester and had found me on one of these sites on account of me being in the right financial range. But it turned out she's also lived in Winchester for years and knows property development so I decided this would be a critically important contact to make even if the places she/I/we checked out didn't seem to work out.

So I put together a sextet of appointments for last Friday (7th November).

One

I was supposed to see this room around 12:30pm but I was told before the day that it had already been taken. Since I'd originally planned to visit this room on the 22nd rather than the 7th that was quite a surprise, but as I later discovered, the property market in Winchester is moving seriously quickly at the moment.

Two

I met R in the High Street and we had a coffee (metaphorically speaking since neither of us actually had any coffee) and did a little walking around the town just so that I could get a better grip on what kind of place it was. It seems to be one of those slightly cultured places (although it is more obviously drab and British than, say, Norwich), and a bit of a nightmare to navigate by car. Getting the lay of the land was invaluable naturally. We killed time and discussed the property market until my appointment with Martin & Co. which is an estate agent kind of place. I had responded to a listing on gumtree.com and it had turned out that the person who posted the listing was doing so kind of on behalf of the estate agent so they contacted me in return. Which was fine.

They actually offered me a second flat but by the time I arrived on the day it had gone. They hadn't actually thought to phone and tell me which in retrospect I should have been slightly irritated about, but the original listing was still available. For the sake of stuff let's call the already-gone one "two" and the actually available one "three".

Three

The estate agent who was there - she seemed to be the only person in the office at the time and actually locked the door and posted a "back soon" note when she left - led us around the corner to the flat.

This was a pretty tiny kind of room. In fact it was just a room. It had a kitchen and a bathroom both of which were extremely small and a main room which had room for a sofa bed (included) but not enough room for a bed and a sofa at the same time. I would have been happy there, in fact I have been happy in similar spaces, but the place was tiny and it reminded me a great deal of college. There was a shared washing machine downstairs (with the bill split how, exactly?) Electric heating, microwave, fridge and electric cooker and a few pots and pans (according to my notes) included.

Four

After looking around our next two visitings were ones R had scoped out and found interesting, but needed someone to share with. We spent about an hour in a pub, the Wykeham Arms, near the first property, discussing the relative economy of sharing a flat as opposed to living alone and the parts of Winchester which are and aren't worth living in.

The next property kind of intimidated me. Unfurnished, it consisted basically of a lot of big, white square rooms. The ceilings were actually tall enough to qualify them as cubical rooms, although the lighting (I would describe them as chandeliers, even) dropped low enough to pose a real danger to me if left unchecked. The size of the place was shocking to me. It felt opulent. I had no idea whether I could afford something so big and I certainly didn't feel like I deserved to live in something so big. But on the other hand, why not? Location for this was extremely good, being about 5 minutes' walk from the High Street with that walk taking you around the Cathedral and taking in other scenic sights. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms (one en suite shower which R called since it's something she was specifically looking for and I was less fussed, the other having no shower, just a bath), huge lounge, huge kitchen, smaller extra kind of "study" room. There was storage all over the place. I couldn't fill a corner of one of the rooms with all of my stuff. But maybe I could expand to fill that much space? I don't know. I suspect yes!

Dishwasher, washing machine, extremely confusing high-tech electric hob thing which me, R and the estate agent all failed to be able to work.

The main issue with this property was location. It had an excellent location. Unless you have a car. Permit parking but there were almost no spaces sight. Driving around the place looked horrifically difficult because of extremely narrow roads masquerading as two-way when they should have been one-way. And it was only available for 6 months so it might not even have been worth the effort.

Five

This was a cool room. It had apparently been part of some old military barracks and converted - the square it sits on still looks like an official governmental set of buildings. The place was tall and existed on several floors, which made me wonder how hard it was to heat. The kitchen, big bathroom with shower and the smaller of the two bedrooms all clustered on the ground floor. Fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washer, dryer. An area fit for a dining table nearby. Up some stairs to a raised area which acted like a lounge, ideal for a television and sofas and stuff. Big balcony area out back with room for a barbecue. Up some more stairs to an internal balcony with space for a computer/office kind of arrangement. And behind that, another, larger (but lower) bedroom with an en suite (and again, low) bathroom. One parking space with visitor parking too (very strictly controlled, you need a sticker to display to use that). Easy access to the city and the station.

The only real issue is the roof. R expressed a preference for the downstairs bedroom but if I took the one upstairs I might end up banging my head all day every day.

Six

And lastly I had this one I was pursuing on my own. This was a shared house with four people in it; I would be replacing a guy who was moving out. One en suite bathroom but that wouldn't be mine; I'd be sharing the "non-suite" one with two others. Shared kitchen, appliances, electric oven and stuff.

Good value on bills, split four ways, but it felt cramped and dark and too... intimate with the other flatmates. I don't think that was the one for me.

There were and are other possibilities floating around but given how fast places are going, the more I think about it, the more I think option five seems like the best one. Writing all of this out in text has been conducive to the thought processes. I'm glad I did this.

Update

Even as I was composing this it turns out option five is gone. That's what I get for not making the snap decision.

I actually feel really guilty about that because the the only reason we didn't snap the place up was because of me. I'm new to this whole flat hunting concept and I don't like making big decisions without sleeping on them, but it seems like in the current property climate (in Winchester, at any rate), you have to decide fast or you don't even get the option. It's a take-it-or-leave-it thing. The worst part is, this was a property that R was very interested in and she was really enthusiastic to take it and it was only on my say-so that we held off for a bit. So basically, I lost her that opportunity. I don't usually use emoticons in blog posts but this is an occasion on which I would consider using your old colon and left parenthesis. With a lot of guilt and embarrassment in the mix. More as it happens, I guess.