It has been four years since I last searched for a flat on the commercial market. Returning to it now, the rental landscape is unrecognisable. Over the past two years, I have been fortunate to live first with friends, and then to move in with a friend of a friend who already had a place secured and was looking for a flatmate. I have been spared, I now appreciate, a great deal of pain.
The task should, in theory, be quite simple. A two-bed flat for around £2,000 a month in Islington, Hackney, Waltham Forest or Haringey, an area of some 40 square miles. (Yes, we have looked at moving out of London too: if you know of anywhere savings on rent aren’t cancelled out by extortionate commuting costs, please write in.) Preferably unfurnished, because my entire flat’s worth of furniture has spent the past two years growing mouldy in my grandmother’s garage – but no worries if not. Preferably with a metre of outside space – but again, no worries if not; I spent the whole of that baking lockdown summer without so much as a window box, after all. I would quite like a dishwasher, and a proper fridge-freezer, rather than one of those under-counter fridges with the tiny freezer at the top. But no, you’re quite right, I’m being unreasonable; running water and electricity are all the comforts I need.
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