And House Hunt Continues #MumbaiMemoirs

Things never really go as we want them to be. Previous House Hunt seemed to have bore the fruits of our labour but we were highly mistaken to think so. The broker who had shown the place which we had instantly labeled as our ‘Home’, didn’t get in touch with us for the next two days. And it was obvious that we began to panic. We thought the worst that  he was fooling us around and might be showing it to the other potential tenants on the pretext of arranging a meeting with the owner which he said would be somewhere around second half of the month. We decided not to give him the benefit of doubt and started off with the search again. Who knows even if he was telling the truth, the owner might not want to rent the house to us on whatever reasons that we couldn’t think of at the moment.

So, Sunday was decided for the hunt. Having spent pretty tiring Saturday, I reluctantly pulled myself out of the bed in the morning and then out of the house full of relatives. On the least that could have been good about the day was its weather. I was already feeling tired and sleepy when we reached the first house of list today. History seemed to be repeating itself- small and over-budget. We moved to the second one, the one broker claimed to have lot of storage space and he turned out to be right too. The place was full of cupboards and wardrobes. Atleast one on every of the house…. and one thing that we couldn’t miss out was the foldable dining table. Seriously, Mumbaikars know how to make the best out of the smallest of space available. We liked the place but the rent was still an issue. With our hopes still high, we walked to see another one.

The building we assumed we would walk in turned out to be the neighbor of the building where we saw this house which already had some cracks in the wall and was ready to break down any next moment. The house was spacious but its pathetic condition made us remember the one we had seen last week. We dismissed this one to see another which turned out to be more of a rainbow-land than a house to us. With our aesthetic standards as normal as it should be, we rejected the house just because its walls were yellow, design on ceiling was painted fluorescent orange and cupboards were a shade of red. Some might consider it a haughty decision when we had no concrete option to finalize but it was the one who was certainly jeopardizing our sense of elegance.

The broker was quick to judge our reactions and took us to another one which was less spacious than the one we had just seen but was semi-furnished. The family living there was moving out to a new bigger house so wanted to rent this out. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling when I realized that other than the family of four, a dog and two cats also lived in that 1-BHK. Certainly, how big a heart of a person is matters more than the size of the house. But before we had walked out, the landlady had already spoken about a list of rules to be followed to be eligible to live in the house. We denied politely, and decide to take a break and have lunch to recharge ourselves.

Though tired, we decided to give another broker a chance, hoping the broker no. 1 would get us the House no. 2 we saw. This broker believed in no-fancy-dreams, and hence showed us around the houses that were really under budget. He was the first one who wouldn’t show us super-nice places and then when we had dreamed of the perfect home, he would break it by telling us the rent. We liked his straightforwardness.  But the first place he showed us was an instant dislike. We couldn’t imagine living there and even if we did, the moment our parents would see us living there they would definitely come and take us away the next moment.

Next was the one on the ground floor, pretty unmanaged and ill-maintained one. It was pretty under our budget too but we just couldn’t think of it as our home. I know, this seems so silly going after instincts even after spending the day searching a house, but we just didn’t go with it. From ground floor, it was now the fourth floor that too without any facility of elevator. Wow! I would loose weight within a month, I blurted out instantly! The house was pretty small, and earned the name Doll-house almost instantly by my friend. Though it has it’s negative but still something struck a chord with us and we decided to have it as an option.

So, after that, we finally called it a day. Having visited eight houses and shortlisted two to add our previous week’s option, we hoped to finalize one out of these three. We decided to sleep over and think afresh the next day about eliminating the other options too. As Sunday evening ended, it was again time to welcome a new week hoping that it might bring us some good news..

How hard it was for you, finding a new house and settling in a new city? Share your experiences!!