Friday 3 August 2012

Checklist For Moving To a New Place

I just moved to a new place. I've had to move a lot in the past few years and I was hoping to settle down for a few years at least in this new place (henceforth referred to as X). Unfortunately, I didn't do my homework very well and I ended up with a very nice place, but it's too expensive. It turns out that I could have found very decent apartments cheaper.

I did do one thing right, I only took a 6-month contract. This means that if I do find something nice at the end of my contract, I can just move into that new property. X is a big city and there are always new properties available. 

The way I went about it was to book viewings for one day in X and then decide according to those viewings. I was not in the mood to go to X again as that would mean a 4-hour return trip as well as 10 hour of viewings and travelling within X. I should probably just have stayed in X for a couple of days and booked many viewings during that period.

I also did not go to just one neighbourhood and I ended up having to travel long distances within X too. So here's my checklist on what I should do next time:

  1. Look for properties 1 month in advance and set aside 2-3 days for viewings.
  2. Shortlist 15-20 properties which are within budget and not too far from intended place of work.
  3. Call and book viewings for at least 12 viewings during a 2 day period or 18 for 3 days. Make sure properties booked for one day are not too far from one another.
  4. Go for house viewings and note down likes and dislikes of every property, including distance to work and amenities, size of rooms (bathroom, bedroom,...), price of property and if it includes bills.
  5. Do not forget to ask what is included and this includes furniture, cleaning of communal areas, type of tv/broadband bundle, how many people living in the house.
  6. Shortlist 3-4 properties which you'd want to live in and rank them. Contact the top 2 first and see if you can arrange for a better price.
  7. Sort out of everything.
Now all I need to do is remember that I've written this here o.O