Looking for a new pad is exciting, right? Wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
a) You discover a new kind of angry, one exclusively reserved for estate agents b) you lose the ability to make general non-house-hunting related chit chat and c) you genuinely considering calling up Channel 4 and demanding to speak to Kirstie and Phil.
You'll be lying to yourself if you don't admit the following things are spot on when it comes to flat hunting...
1. You bore your friends/family/colleagues half to death. You lose the ability to talk about anything other than what a crying shame it is to be "priced out of the market". Before you began scanning Right Move when your boss wasn't looking, you'd only ever heard Sarah Beeny speak in the buzz terms you're now spewing. You're new favourite word? Compromise. Everyone was interested for the first three days, but six weeks later they've totally glazed over.
2. You develop a sudden and in-depth knowledge about council tax bands. Did you know council tax is calculated by the value of the property in 1991? You do now and so does everyone down The Dog And Duck after you lectured them on the banding process last Friday night.
3. You not so secretly resent your future flatmates. You haven't even begun living together yet and you already hate their guts. Even if you're moving into an existing house share and have only met your new cohabitors once you've got a feeling they're going to eat all your muesli and forget to put the bins out.
4. You almost get fired. While you see it in a completely different light, your boss really doesn't appreciate the backlog of work that's piled up since you made dropping Google maps pins in areas you'd consider living your top priority. And regularly asking Siri about primary schools in Watford while at your desk really isn't the way to the boss man/lady's heart. Also, you don't even have children so why do you care about local schools?
5. Rowing with estate agents becomes your forte. Your party trick used to be a half arsed attempt at the splits, now it's calling up estate agents and yelling blue murder at them. "What do you mean the landlord won't take my offer? It's only a smidge (it's actually £400) under the monthly asking price!"
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