If there’s one experience more harrowing than getting stuck in a crowded lift for 24 hours, it’s the experience of looking for a house to rent in India! From brokers who bombard with you messages on Watsapp to landlords who treat you like shit, you’ll see it all! It’s a thoroughly unenjoyable act that we just have to get over with! Here are 11 things you experience while going house hunting in India:
1. You realize that the one thing that’s more difficult to find than a good house is a good broker!
2. Either every broker wants a really deep tan or they really want you to suffer because they always pick the hottest time of the day for you to go and check out the houses.
3. Some of the houses you check out are so bad you feel the owner should just put up a board saying ‘horror house’ and start charging people to walk around the place.
4. You come across houses where there are giant open windows in the bathroom. Why? Why would anyone do that?
5. At times, the houses you check out haven’t been vacated yet. Which means, you have to hop over some stranger’s dirty underwear and belongings to decide if you like the place or not.
6. You come across some ridiculous ‘landlord stipulations’ like “no noise”, “no friends”, “no non-veg”, “no walking around naked in the bathroom”.
7. Every landlord/landlady you meet makes you go through such an intense grilling session that you feel like you’ve been picked by the FBI for questioning!
8. Every house hunting session starts off with you telling the broker that you have a very modest budget but by the end of the week you find yourself checking out houses that are 5-10k more than what you can afford.
9. By the end, you realize there’s no such thing as a perfect house to rent because if the location is good the room is small, if the room is spacious the bathroom is shit and so on and so forth!
10. Finally, when you find a house and decide to take it, your bank balance goes from a healthy, plump amount to absolutely nothing. Courtesy the broker’s fee, the first month’s rent and the security deposit!
11. Many times during this not-so-easy quest to find a house to rent, you consider leaving everything and going back to your comfortable little room in your own wonderful house with your parents!