Flats and House, Part 2

I’d fallen in love with my current building a long time before I lived here. I used to project all kinds of fantasies of success, wealth and excitement onto the residents of buildings like these. The round windows, sorry oculi, I thought were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, and now I have two of them. The gruelling experience of getting here almost ruined me though. The first time the flat came up I missed it by a day, so when it came up again a few months later I was ready. I viewed it the same day and, even though it was littered with bongs, a foul smell and depressing heavy metal ephemera, I could see its innate charm and agreed to take it right away.

There began a three month long trauma of incompetence, lies and rudeness on a scale that makes me shiver even now to think of it. The agency I dealt with are a collection of the most stupid, disorganised and obnoxious people I’ve ever encountered. The day I get my deposit back from them (ha!) I will phone the poor clueless owner of this flat and tell him the very same.

I had packed my belongings and taken the day off work to move. The evening before, and for the third time, I phoned to ensure the key would be ready for me at the allotted time and that the flat had been cleaned. My deposit and agency fee were paid already and I was told once more that everything was ready to go. While I was waiting for the van to arrive the next morning they called and said I couldn’t move in. The tenant had gone AWOL and hadn’t moved out, in fact he hadn’t paid any rent the whole time he lived there.



I asked why nobody had thought to tell me, or warn me, about the situation. I was told it was none of my business how they conducted their affairs with existing clients. Amongst other things not fit to publish here, I told them that a) he wasn’t a client if he wasn’t paying rent, was he?, and b) how had they managed to get in to clean the flat if he was still in there? ‘We haven’t been able to clean the flat,’ was their answer. ‘So the woman who told me last night that the flat had been cleaned was lying? ‘No she was mistaken.’

And so this went on. At one point I asked them if I hadn’t been staying with my kind and understanding sister and had literally had to leave the flat that day, what would they have done? I would have been homeless. ‘That’s not my problem,‘ said devil woman. I’m ashamed to say I almost cried that day. They were bemused as to why I was even angry. ‘A verbal contract is all that’s been exchanged here,’ I was told, as she neatly overlooked the thousand plus quid they’d had from me. It was another six weeks before they could evict the guy and I was able to move in, during which time I lived out of boxes, couldn’t pay rent to my sister because they had literally all of my money, and was repeatedly told I was in the wrong.


Without getting the violins out I was plunged into something of a depression and made to feel helpless and exploited, multiplied by the fact I was experiencing a domestic crisis and was doing this by myself. So I went to the Estate Agents Ombudsman. By this stage I had over 20 unreturned phone calls to the agency. Quite literally the same hour they were contacted by the Ombudsman I was telephoned by the manager and called ‘Sir’. So contact the Ombudsman if things go wrong is my advice! I filed a complaint during my moving-in week but by this time I was so relieved to be in, so tired of being spoken to like dirt, and suffering from such bad stress (manifested as insomnia, dandruff (!!!), and bad dreams when I did sleep) that I literally couldn’t fill out the complaint form and write the letter. In the end they admitted they had treated me badly and unprofessionally, to the point they sacked the woman in question. God forgive me but I hope that bitch is still unemployed. But I made it home.


The fact is though I can’t afford to live here, but I don’t feel that, at thirty, I could make a success of sharing with strangers again, moreover I simply don’t want to. I can’t move in with my partner, and every time I get on a bus something vile happens that makes the prospect of commuting twice a day depress me to the point I feel like self-harming. So I cling on, experiencing a deficit every month in order to be somewhere that feels like home. A few months ago, prior to arranging his remortgage, the owner offered to sell this flat to me at the absolute bargain price of 112 K. But this would require deposit and fees amounting to at least six and half grand and when you owe that amount and more in unpaid debts and no savings, well, you do the maths. There is nowhere in town I could live that is cheaper than this flat, and my flat is beautiful. What am I to do?

Flats and Houses, Part 1

Inspired by Manchester Confidential’s debate about city living, plus the fantastic Renter Girl blog which I’ve only managed to find time to read now by neglecting work all afternoon, I thought I’d regale you with a portion of my Manchester history which I often overlook, but which has been essential in shaping my experience here; my homes.


I’ve been a resident of Manchester twelve years and this is my thirteenth address. It sounds a lot but actually it’s not that unusual a tally. Three student houses in three years followed by four addresses in Chorlton as friends moved to Manchester then moved out again to shack up with partners or get on the property ladder. (I still don’t earn enough to even pay off my Student Loans so a mortgage has always been beyond the pale for me, even at the height of the boom). Another address for when I moved in with my partner, and one more when we broke up. My next was as a lodger to help my sister buy her first flat when she moved back here from down south. The next, and current, for when I wanted to live alone again. Thirteen in all. It’s easy done.


My first address was Oak House, Fallowfield, student accommodation furnished by Swedish prisons and decorated to match, where everything had a thin layer of grease on it the day we moved in and a thicker one the day we moved out. The next two addresses were typical Fallowfield terraces, one well kept and recently refurbed, very homely and cosy, the other a disgrace, replete with damp, slugs, freezing cold, everything threadbare, and ironically the one that got burgled. We were well into a day of hangover TV and junk food when one of us piped up, ‘What used to be there?,’ indicating a suspiciously clean and vacant square beneath the TV set. It used to be our video player. They took that and a bag of sugar, and judging from the footprints in the kitchen, the latter might have been for the dog they brought with them.


All my addresses in Chorlton I loved and would move back to now. One of the things I love about Manchester is that, while buying in a place like Chorlton is only for the lucky few, you can have all the benefits of residents’ overspill wealth and culture for as little as £42.50 a week (at least in 2000 you could). The reason I recall that particular rent and not the others is because we had to leave it in a pile once a week at the bottom of the stairs for the landlord to collect. All above board though I’m sure …


After Chorlton I lived in Hulme (and had a forty-five second walk to work from my front door) and as a sometime Hulmeosexual it was also sadly the first place I ever got homophobic abuse in the street in Manchester (dauntingly, the first incident was outside a newsagent called GBH). I’d gotten the bug for living close to town though, so after that I moved in to the Northern Quarter, next door to the Craft Centre. I loved the location, a small pedestrianised street, far from any traffic, even though my room was tiny and all the doors were sprung so everything was soundtracked by slams.


Sharing with my sister at Lockes Yard after that was also great fun, I love that little area of town, Great Marlbrough Street, New Wakefield Street, the arches and bars, and I loved having a balcony in my bedroom with a gorgeous Japanese maple outside to mark the seasons. But the spectre of the sprung and slamming door was ever-present, coming this time from all around, and a noisy and unpleasant neighbour upstairs helped make my mind up to leave. I would leave notes for him after he stopped answering his door, such as:

“I have been knocking intermittently for the last hour. Either you can’t hear me because your music’s too loud, or you’re ignoring me because you know your music’s too loud. Either way it proves my point. I’m having to go out now to get away from you, instead of staying in and watching a film as I planned. If I ever have to do this again, I’ll call the police.”

My sister is still in that flat, the neighbour has thankfully gone.