Finding somewhere to live in somewhere you hardly know about

channy

If you have been offered a job in a place you don't live near to and commuting would be expensive and time wasting, the only choice is to refuse the job or accept and move nearer to the job. How would you go about finding cheap accommodation in a place you're unfamiliar with? The place you could work for says you have to find the place yourself.

If you wanted to move out of where you currently live which way round would you choose:

1) Find the job anywhere else but where you live and then move there...
2) Find the place you'd like to live, set up and then start looking for a job...
(With this, you have no income, savings aren't great and there is no permanent job yet or any guarantee of finding one as soon as possible)

MoneySavingSpender

http://www.upmystreet.com/ isn't bad

Hopefully others will post similar/better links

Zelie

Before you accept the job you might consider whether you can afford to live in that area. Check house prices on http://www.nethouseprices.com/ and see if you could buy. If you are not in a position to buy then you need to consider rental costs for the area.

If it were me I'd establish I could afford to live on the salary in that area and then move into the smallest, cheapest rental I could find and stay there for six months. Use that time to find a decent property that would be your 'real' home. (Obviously this assumes that the job is a good, stable one and that you are on a time-limit to accept it!).

mizzbiz

we have done as the above post suggests, keeping our flat 'at home' and moving into a very cheap bungalow we found so we could see how the place was.

We found the place by first looking at rightmove for weeks to assess areas by rental prices, then went down one saturday and found one in the paper, private let which we took straight away. It's very cheap and luckily in a very nice part of a not so great city.

As for wanting to get away without a job offer, I would seek the job I wanted first then move to that location. The other way round could make life very difficult if you paid all that cash to ove, didn't know anyone and failed to find a suitable job.

lostinrates

Well, we've done this for DH's work. we didn't own already, but if we did we would have taken the same option : rent!

The first place we move in Milan, after lots of taking advice and lots of walking round the city was ok, but not us. We ended up surprising ourselves by prefering a little suburb.

Now in UK we are looking to buy in areas we don't know well, but have an idea about. We feel more secure in this choice as our choice will be made firstly on geography (access to work for DH and my elderly parents), then on the house, and when we find things we like we'll take closer looks at the areas.

zebulon

lostinrates wrote: »

The first place we move in Milan, after lots of taking advice and lots of walking round the city was ok, but not us. We ended up surprising ourselves by prefering a little suburb.

don't think I could live in Milan either!

well I've got a friend who moved today to Estonia! (self-learning estonian for the last 2-3 months, LoL)

he got some temporary accommodation organised with help from someone at work but he'll basically spend his time to find a place asap, by as mentionned by lostinrates, lots of walking round the city.

I would check out prices in different area to make sure you could afford
if it means what you can afford looks like its in some dodgy place you might think about it...

then it depends of the job aswell - if you're offered a job which is a good opportunity, something you really want etc,
if you tunr down the job because you don't quite know where to rent a flat, it would probably means you didn't really want the job in the first place maybe.

so maybe go there for a week-end, invest in a map (maybe something free from tourist info centre?) and get around different parts
look at transport from where you would work etc...

good luck :j

lostinrates

zebulon wrote: »

don't think I could live in Milan either!
:j

LOL, I do LOVE Milan, didn't mean to cast aspertions on it, loved living there.

kunekune

We've always found one job first, moved, and then found the second job. We were lucky almost every time: usually our expenses were covered by my employer or OH's, and some times they helped with initial accommodation.

I second the advice to rent first. In fact, if you can manage it, and unless you can visit for a house-hunting trip, I would suggest taking a B&B or holiday cottage for the first month. Long distance arrangements can be good - we have had mostly good experiences, one terrible one (ironically, that time DH had seen it but in his defence he was not in a good way, son in hospital with life-threatening illness just a week before a major move). Take as long as you can to check out the area, and to make sure not just that the property is ok but the LL is too.

Tools I use when looking at places include the add on on Rightmove that includes aerial views (and birds eye if you're lucky) and the descriptions of schools.

HxBro

channy wrote: »

If you have been offered a job in a place you don't live near to and commuting would be expensive and time wasting, the only choice is to refuse the job or accept and move nearer to the job. How would you go about finding cheap accommodation in a place you're unfamiliar with? The place you could work for says you have to find the place yourself.

This is what we did:

Go visit the area, stay in a b&b and ask the owners of the b&b about the area, maybe visit a local pub and ask people in there too - we found out that we should avoid some areas (down wind from the sewage plant for instance), and areas which are nice.
Have a list of rightmove properties do some drive by's, try a few other streets close by too.
Have a walk around the shops and see if you could live with what's there.
We also checked out several of the other villages around the main area we wanted to be in too.