Apartment hunting in England

It took a couple of weeks but as of Monday April 23rd Kari and I have found our own place. It is an apartment in Ashby de la Zouch. Ashby is about 10 minutes from my cousin's house in Overseal, which is outside of Birmingham, which is in the center of England.

The apartment is less than a 10 minutes walk from the town center and a 2 minute walk from the grocery store Somerfields. It is a small two bedroom apartment with its own parking lot (which is not very common from what we have observed). There are at least 5 pubs (The Plough is our favorite so far) within a 5 minute walk. The town center has a butcher, fruit and vegetable (they say veg over here) market, several different shops and stores, an appliance store, a bed store, etc. It is pretty well served so that means we really do not need to drive to run errands.

We called to get the utilities sorted Monday after signing papers. All the utilities were on, we just had to notifiy the different companies. Gas and electric is deregulated here but you have many more options (and therefore more headaches). We also had to call the water company and the council. You pay council tax here (seems to be like property tax, but it goes to the city or county instead of the state, and includes your garbage service), and the renter pays for that directly, not the landlord. We got a cellphone (mobile over here) so for now we will not be getting a landline. Nor will we be getting a TV. We figure this will force us to get out and see more. Also, the television (BBC) is a public entity, so if you get a TV you are supposed to get a license which supports the BBC. It sounds like they may have a problem with collecting this license fee, which may be why the BBC is making serious cuts here to local service.

The apartment did not include a washing machine or a refrigerator. If you are wondering about a dishwasher that would be me. Most places do not have dishwashers. Anyway, we found a place that sold second hand home furnishings and we got a washing machine/dryer, a refrigerator (no freezer, both units fit under the counter; did I mention their kitchens are very small?), a dyson vacuum and a lamp for £160 including delivery (a new refrigerator was about £190). We also purchased a mattress from the bed store across the street. My cousins and aunt loaned us several items including a bed frame, dishes, chest of drawers, a lamp, and some utensils.

We then hit the charity shops. These are like Goodwill, but there are many more types, such as British Red Cross, different cancer societies, RSPCA, etc. We also went to a car boot sale (like a flea market, but people sell what they can load into the boot or trunk of their car, like dishes, pots and pans, clothers, pirated copies of CDs and DVDs, etc) and Wilkinson's (like Target). We were able to get the place pretty well furnished, although we still need a couch.