Terrible Places I Have Lived

As you might know I currently rent in Putney but I'm a serial renter and I've rented

all over the country and I've made lots of mistakes and learned lots along the way. When I first started out renting, however, I was only interested in one thing; can I afford to live here?

I was temping, looking to get into marketing as I'd studied that and I fancied it as a career. My finance was, well, limited. I'd spend hours scouring the private ads trying to find a small studio flat to rent in Putney to call my home. I didn't think of using a letting agent because I wanted somewhere cheap and I honestly didn't think at that time, that they would have had anything suitable for me.

Because I didn't use an agent I ended up living in some dumps.

Like the first property I rented; a studio flat in Putney. It was very small, but it had a bright sunny window had recently been redecorated and was affordable. So I signed the year-long lease there and then. I thought it was too good an offer to refuse. I was over the moon!

Until I moved in that is. Then I noticed that I was sharing my studio, or to describe it more accurately my tiny bed-sit, with woodlice, cockroaches and ants. Oh and I mustn't forget to mention the mould that grew in the wardrobe either. Or the damp that soon broke through the freshly painted walls. It was a dump and a health hazard. I moved out as soon as I could but even then because I'd signed a one-year lease I had to pay the rent for the whole year. That was a mistake I wouldn't make again. From now on it would only be Short Term Assured Tenancy Agreements for me. My knowledge of the legal aspects of renting was on the up!

I'd met my partner by then who was studying for his accounting exams and we soon found a first-floor converted studio flat to rent in Richmond. On the day we moved in we noticed that the electricity wasn't working. No lights, no sockets, nothing.

Thankfully, as the landlord lived below us, we got that fixed quite quickly. That time. You see, the electrics kept going off in our flat, as in at least once every six weeks, which was a small problem as the cooker, the boiler, everything in our flat was electric. We'd get up to find that our alarm clocks were dead and as a result we were late for work. We gave up using the freezer; it became too expensive throwing away defrosted food. I got quite fed up of getting a cold wash in the morning because there was no hot water! But I did get used to making cold meals and putting on layers to keep warm as we had no heating! We only stayed there for six months. I wish I could say we'd learned our lesson then and gone through agents, but we didn't.

We've lived in a flat conversion in Barnes where the wind came in through gaps between the windows and the frames. We rented a townhouse in Twickenham where rain came in through electric sockets - that was scary! And we lived in a flat in Roehampton, where every night snails would appear and decorate our carpet with trails.

We only rent through letting agents now. That way we know we won't find ourselves in a dump.

by: Dawn Taylor

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