Photos via Gumtree
What is living in London like? Hell. Here’s proof, beyond all doubt, that renting in London is a nightmare.
Where is it? Will talk to the lad primarily, when they turn up. “Hello mate how you doing mate yes,” that sort of thing. Initiate the handshake but look as if I’m distracted halfway through it. What I do is affect an air of already being late to another meeting that started at the same time as this viewing did (even though I don’t actually have a job), as though I am doing them a great favour by squeezing them into my stacked schedule of passive asset holding. This creates urgency. Then I’ll give them probably two to three minutes to view and assess a space they are going to spend a year of their life paying £18,000 pounds for. “Yeah, as you can see, bedroom, kitchen,” I’ll say. “Floors, walls.” I will describe the flat as if I have never seen a property before in my entire life. “As you can see, lots of light comes in through the windows.” I’ll describe the flat as if I’ve been forced to make a 15-minute presentation in front of a class that I forgot entirely to prepare for. “Freezer – you can keep frozen sort of goods in there.” I’ll look at my watch while she gently tries to convince him that this could work. “Could be nice, for us,” she’ll say. “If we move every single piece of furniture around… and change the curtains.” At this point, I will yell some arcane rule I have just made up on the spot – “Can’t change curtains,” I’ll say, as if the curtains were left to me by a beloved relative, a family heirloom, and that a tenant can’t be trusted to unpeg them from a curtain rail and fold them up in the back of a wardrobe for a year without damaging them irreparably, and that doing so would be a deposit violation – and at this point we will enter a sub-negotiation. “We have our own sofa – could we bring it along with us?” she’ll say. Probably bought a nice one on Gumtree. Probably wants to actually be comfortable, during the evenings, and actually take nice photos on it for Instagram, instead of this strange coarse flat grey thing I’ve bought in bulk from an old factory that went bust after it flooded. At this point I will suck air through my teeth as if weighing up a great moral quandary, but instead what I will be thinking is this: sofa-haver, is it. Bought a sofa, has she. This little bitch has money. Play this right and I’ll get two hundred extra quid a month out of these cunts.
What is there to do locally? Easiest way here is to pretend that dozens of other couples – younger than these ones, maybe! More professional! – are desperately interested in this flat, which makes them panic. They probably have to move out in two weeks anyway so they need to either get this all wrapped up today or tomorrow, or they are fucked. This obviously is advantageous to me. “Yeah, well yeah, sofas,” I’ll say. “Only thing is – and I’ll be straight up with you—” (I say this to make them feel like I am being honest) “—I’ve got another viewing later, and it’s for three.” “Three people?” she’ll say, and I’ll look sad and nod. There’s no way that these two can compete with the mighty spending power of three professional people. They’ll get absolutely blown out of the water by them, they think. So they’ll offer me more money on the spot to make sure they secure it, and I make an extra grand-and-a-half a year just by making them panic a bit. And that’s going straight in the ISA. “Hold on,” she’s saying. “Three people? In this flat?” Yeah.
Alright, how much are they asking? “You think this flat is big enough for three people to live in?” she says. Her tone has changed and I don’t really like it. Look at the bloke. He’s saying nothing. “Yeah, well look at the flat,” I’ll say. “It’s got two beds in it, look.”
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