It’s not easy finding a place to live when you don’t know the area very well and you currently live about 5,000 miles away. I knew I would be in Guernsey at the end of October, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to investigate the housing market. My boss gave me the name of some estate agents to contact as a starting point. I was able to do some looking on the internet to get some background information. My plan was to call each of the three companies to try to arrange a few hours with each to see places when I would be in Guernsey. Unfortunately, the people I talked to were not very customer service oriented, and seemed to be putting up lots of road blocks to work with me. Hmmm, isn’t your job to match a place to live with a willing renter? With some persistence, I managed to convince three people to at least consider the idea.
Most places to rent are listed with only one estate agent, so you have to work with several at one time to get a good feel for the market. [It’s basically the same idea when buying, but we’ll come back to that later.] When visiting Guernsey, I was hoping to see a wide variety of places to get an idea of location, pricing, and what was available. Two of the three agents didn’t seem like they wanted to show me many places and certainly did not want to spend too much time with me. The third was much more patient and really seemed to understand my situation. Between the three of them, I started to get a good feel for where places are on the island and how much I could get for my money. There were places close to the office and places in the middle of the “country”; places in basements and upper floor apartments with nice sea views; one apartment that smelled bad and one with a nice view of the power station. The one common thing is that all of the places seemed pretty small and with very little storage space! It seemed like the best thing was to have an in-town location convenient to the office to start. I could then further investigate locations after I arrived. In the end, there were several that stood out above the rest and one place in particular that I really liked. Now, I had to wait for my housing license.
When the housing license came through a few weeks later, I made arrangements for another trip to Guernsey with the intent of signing a contract on a place to live. As expected, the license gave me access to local market housing, which basically means that I can legally occupy any housing on the island. However, there is a catch. I am assigned a number (TRP) that sets a minimum size of place I can occupy. This helps to ensure an affordable housing market for true locals. My TRP would be about right if I had a family of four or so. Fortunately, they have an exception that anyone can occupy a two bedrooms or smaller place regardless of TRP.
When I visited in December, I asked each of the three estate agents to show me the best of what was available at the time based on my criteria. Unfortunately, my favorite place from the first round had just been rented. I saw about 10 places – two stood out from the rest (one that I had seen in October). In the end, I went for the smaller of the two places. It seemed like a better fit, and it came furnished (I had no idea how long it would take my furniture to be shipped). I was also glad that it was listed with the estate agent that seemed most interested in having my business.
So, I signed a one year lease and put down a deposit on The Coach House (more details coming).
If you are curious about the Guernsey housing market:
http://www.swoffers.co.uk/
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