New Digs

 For some time now, the wife and I have been looking for a new place to live.

With fondness, I recall house hunting in Lagos as the absolute ghetto. The stress of having to contact and “settle” agents, the horribly overpriced houses, the endless viewing trips, buying recharge cards for agents, enduring tribal bullshit in some instances and all the overall stress that comes from living in Lagos.

Courtesy of aunty Ngozi’s connects, we had been fortunate to get a small studio apartment almost immediately we arrived in London. Our landlord, very nice guy, was one of the very wealthy, early set of Nigerians who had established themselves here and had a string of houses all over London which I’m guessing is a major source of income for him. So, like the true Nigerian landlord he is, bros decided that he could make more money in this inflated London housing market by reconverting the studio apartment into a one bedroom and jacking up the rent by almost 600 pounds.

Of course, this clearly didn’t fall within our financial plans and the man, to give him credit, actually advised against us staying there, seeing as the property is situated in very prime location and he’s currently undervaluing it… He was also magnanimous enough to offer us enough time to look for a new place and also provide whatever references we might need.

London house hunting?? Somewhat similar process BUT waay more efficient and different.

The stress involved in house hunting over here is what I call “Over-efficiency” stress.

Omo. Them go scrutinize your life tire

Na so we begin look for house.

The thing with organized societies is that, everything has strict processes and procedures which have to be adhered to and don’t even bother wasting your time if you fall short.

London has surplus rental agencies both on and offline and there was no shortage of available apartments. Asides the exorbitant rental prices in this city, the second major problem was the fact that landlords here are extraordinarily picky about who they let into their houses. You start seeing things like: Must provide 6 month financial reference, must obtain former landlord consent, no kids, no pets, no smokers, no guests, bla bla and bla.

You can’t help but marvel at the efficiency with which things are done here. The agency we used carried out online reference checks on both of us from workplaces and former landlord which I’m happy to say we passed successfully.

Thank God (AGAIN) for Chioma’s job which is doing the heavy lifting rent wise and Mama Calabar, we were able to afford and provide financial reference for a very nice one-bedroom apartment in Wembley for a small increase in what we already pay.

It’s a lovely apartment. Situated on the second floor of an apartment block, it’s the standard mind-your-business London type of residence. The environment is neat and very well planned, green areas, parking space, good utilities and despite the residential nature of the immediate environment, it has close proximity to commercial hubs in Wembley. There’s a Tesco express supermarket (which is unsuccessfully trying to usurp ASDA for Chioma and i), pizza parlors, grocery stores, a church, nearby bus stations and best of all a train station (North Wembley) all within walking distance.

So all in all, a very good place to continue life in London. (As evidenced by the surprised exclamations and general disbelief from fam and friends that we’ve managed to crack this in so short a time..lol)