We're moving!

Time for a BIG update!

In short: Will got a new job, it's amazing, and we're moving to a beautiful town house in Basingstoke, 45 minutes from London.

Will just started applying for jobs about a week and a half ago and was asked in for an interview the Thursday before last.  A few days later, he was offered an incredible new job for an international company with full benefits in Basingstoke!  Start date: a week later (which is now tomorrow!).  No problem, except we currently live in Exmouth, about 2.5 hours away.

So this week we had to frantically find a place to live.  I never thought I'd miss craigslist so much; finding an apartment is such a hassle and huge expense because you have to go through estate agencies.  They have fees for EVERYTHING!  And their websites are never updated with apartments that are actually currently available.  Will and I tried phoning these agencies inquiring about the properties on their website, and they were all already taken.  The only thing we could do was drive up and start inquiring in person.

Wednesday we drove the 2.5 hours up and it was absolutely horrendous outside; rain drops seemingly the size of gumballs drenched us in a matter of 2 minutes.  We ran from estate agent to estate agent, all of them giving us the same answer "Well, there's really not much out there at the moment, we might have one property that may be okay." So we saw about one property from each of the dozen and a half estate agencies throughout Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

We walked into one agency on the Wednesday and they initially gave us the typical response of only maybe one or two properties, but then one of the agents said they had just received a new property that they thought would be perfect for us.  It was an ex-showroom at a brand new housing development.  2 bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms, full kitchen with dishwasher and combination washing/drying machine (they always have it in the kitchen, weird) and fully furnished by a professional designer.  We booked the first viewing possible for it.

Thursday morning at 11am we went to view the property and fell in love with it.  It has a private garden, covered parking, beautiful furnishings, and best of all it only a five minute walk from Will's new work and the town center.  We of course said we'd take it (and at £825/month, it wasn't too expensive either).  Only problem was that because these estate agents have all these rules about leasing out properties, our combined yearly income had to be 2.5 times the amount of the yearly rent.  It would have been no problem if the government would actually let me work.  We could only go off of Will's salary, which was just shy of the formula to automatically approve us, even though I have tons of money in savings.  The agents were really actually quite understanding, they just had to see if they could convince the landlord.  With a lot of persuasion (and offering to pay the first three months up front in advance) they agreed, so we now have a place to live!

So that's our new place.  I love everything except the pink and orange, but that can be (except for the wallpaper) fixed :)  We can't wait to move in, hopefully by next weekend, as it takes the agencies a while to do all the reference checks and credit checks.  I'm so excited to finally have our own place together!!

Tonight it's back to the bed and breakfast for the week while Will starts his new job.