@ralphdibny I randomly remembered you saying about a credit rating too. I assume you don’t have a credit card then?
I was told to get one to help with credit rating. As long as you use it instead of your debit card and pay it off in full at the end of the month you’ll be grand. Loads of rewards too; I’m with American Express with a cash back card which only gets me a few quid a year but it’s free money seeing as I immediately pay the card off.
@ralphdibny I was similarly over fussy and took me a good 6 months to get the place I'm in now. My old flat the hot water would be very low pressure (used to take about 10 mins to fill up the sink) so that was in the list. I had them all noted down on my phone and a bunch of questions I wanted to ask.
And yeah I didn't think it was possible to look further down on @kyleforrester87, but here were are now on an all new low!
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@kyleforrester87 My wife worked in an estate agents for a while a few years back. It's no joke doing that job by the sounds of it.
The manager was a right character. Tenants would come in to complain about something that was wrong in their property and he would hide behind a desk in the back and get her to tell them he wasn't there. He would do this for weeks until the tenants would be absolutely furious, coming in and yelling "why is he never here?!". One day my wife couldn't take any more yelling and she threw open the office door to reveal the manager crouching in the corner. When the tenant left, the manager went nuts at her, calling her a pig, a cow, and various other things, not all of them animals. Funnily enough, she quit later that day.
Anyway, what I learned is that even if estate agents can sometimes be hard work, the problem may not actually be of their making. It may come from above, just like in many other walks of life.
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
@Thrillho nope, no lines of credit whatsoever. Only loan I ever took out was the student loan. I've certainly heard the same. It's something that I need to research fully though as I can't sign a contract or make an agreement unless I'm fully informed. There's a very confusing array of credit cards to choose from so I think I'll have to wait until I have a solid amount of time so I can sit down and look through all the options properly. It's unlikely to be soon though if I'm honest 😅
@JohnnyShoulder oh really, that's good to know there is some light at the end of the tunnel then! My partner actually fills out a form that we made as we look around the property, while I get a feel for it and look at areas I know could be problems such as exterior walls, corners, windows and bathrooms. It's a good system and we normally have a lot to discuss after we've finished a viewing.
Yeah water pressure is a really bugbear. I need a firm shower, not this lame trickle of water nonsense 😂. Honestly though, i can actually get irritation in certain areas if I don't have proper hard showers every day. The shower in my partner's flat is so weak that it can become problematic if i stay there for a long time
@Gremio108 Haha great. The industry does tend to attract a certain type of person, since you don't need to be qualified and the money can be really good. When it comes to dealing with maintenance stuff you can be stuck between a rock and a hard place if the landlord doesn't want to fork out for repairs. Ultimately the landlord is the client and you need to look after their interests first and foremost, providing they are being lawful, even if they are being an ass. I tend to not take any sh*t and talk straight with people and it works for me so far, I get good feedback and have been doing it for 13-14 years now. It can wear you down though when you have a landlord who won't fix something until the rent is paid and a tenant who won't pay rent until something is fixed, and they are both just blaming you for "not doing your job"!!
Anyway, what I learned is that even if estate agents can sometimes be hard work, the problem may not actually be of their making. It may come from above, just like in many other walks of life.
Quoted for truth. Something as intangible as a job is never the problem; it's always just people.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Back when I rented, I complained a few times about the bathroom ceiling because it had damp on it and occasionally leaked. The landlady kept saying she'd do something about it but didn't get round to it. Then one day the ceiling in the bathroom collapsed. If you looked up you could see the sky.
This, of course, got the landlady to spring into action, hiring an absolute cowboy to come around, spurs janglin', to plaster it all back up. I'm not a plasterer by trade but even I could tell he hadn't done a particularly good job. He didn't even put protection down or anything. There was plaster everywhere. He got halfway through it and asked if he could finish the rest another day because it was 4.30pm and he wanted to go home for his tea. He looked sad when I said I'd prefer him to finish it since there was a hole in my ceiling.
A while later, a painter came round to paint over the plastered bit where the damage had occurred. He laughed when he saw the plastering. He was painting over it, and I said, "That bit on the wall over there needs a little bit of painting too where the dirty water has stained it after the ceiling fell in." He said, "I can see, yeah. But the landlady specifically told me to paint only the ceiling and not touch any walls because that would be extra money."
Predictably, when I was leaving the house the ceiling was once again getting damp, and the paint was peeling away. I often wonder if there's some poor sap sat on the pot in there now, flicking through Facebook on their phone, only for the ceiling to collapse on their head.
@kyleforrester87 Ha yeah, she had a few of those situations too. She'd get a lot of disputes between landlord and tenant which were a bit of a catch 22. One landlord came in once because their tenant had ripped their entire lawn and garden out, and covered it in decking.
It sounds like your approach is good. I think it's one of those jobs where if you've managed to keep at it for years, you're either a solid, honest person, or a psychopath. We'll put you in the former camp, for now at least. Pending further evidence.
@RogerRoger Yeah, it's a sad fact of life that the people who get the flak for things are rarely the cause. Half the jobs I've ever done wouldn't have been as interesting without dealing with angry people though!
@johncalmc "If you looked up you could see the sky."
I can already hear Kyle spinning this as a selling point to the next potential tenant.
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
Ahhh alcopops. I think I only remember and have tried wkd and Smirnoff. Smirnoff was always too lemonadey for me but for some reason I used to like wkd blue before I got a taste for the non sweet flavours of beer and spirits. I think I quickly realised that it wasn't a cost effective way to get drunk though. Don't know if I'd like it now or if it would make my head spin with all that sugar
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