History

So after the tour of our new place I should probably give a brief history of our properties and our current place. I'll go into details on each type of property, our experiences and what I would do differently in future posts.

Tom and I moved into our current flat at the start of December last year. It's a lower ground floor one bedroom in a regency house near the town centre. The landlord lives in the house above and we rent directly from them, the flat is self contained, i.e. we have our own front door, back door, garden and utilities.

Before this our property history is:

1. I first lived with my sister in a 2 bedroom maisonette on the outskirts of the city rented through an estate agent, Tom then moved in and my sister moved out and moved in with her boyfriend (Although there was a crossover time when all 3 of us lived there). Renting via this estate agent was not a good experience for us, I am in no way saying all estate agents are like this but we did not get along with them at all - more on this later.
2. We moved to a small one bedroom house in the suburbs with a garden rented via a private landlord who was very professional and lovely to deal with. This is where we got the turtles, as they stay in the tank at all times unless we are cleaning it most landlords seem to have no issues with them.
3. We rented from a family member, a 2 bedroom bungalow with a garden and garage in another area of the suburbs. Now, I'm not going to describe this place as I don't want to start out on a negative note before this blog even gets any followers, but definately more on the skeletons in this particular closet in a future post(s)! However I'd say what we learnt is that renting from family is the same as borrowing money from family or friends, and the same cautions apply. This is when we got our cats which I admit has restricted us for future properties.
4. In the end we were given our notice to move out and we found our current place and all lived happily ever after so far...