House Hunting

Signs are hung on the gate and are often difficult to see

Today was the first day of house hunting. House hunting in Cambodia is very different to back home. There are estate agents but not for the kind of house we can afford!!! There are no glossy brochures or easy websites to compare prices. House hunting involves driving round an area you would like to live in and looking out for tiny for rent signs (usually in Khmer) taped or stuck onto the gates of the houses. Or you get a lovely Khmer friend to do this for you! We have someone looking for us but thought we need to make an effort too and while the city is quiet we might as well get out and have a look.
So this afternoon we all got on our motos and armed with a printout map went in search of a house. The area we chose was on the other side of the road across the canal/river (stinky river) from the Russian Hospital down St 71 BT. The only slight problem with this area is the lack of street numbers, they are on most of the roads but not on the map. So we found a house and wrote down the st number but then had a very hard time trying to relocate it on the map! I am going back tomorrow to photograph all possible houses so we can remember where they were!
So we trailed around and saw some possible houses and wrote down the phone numbers. Now the next step is to get our Khmer friend to ring the numbers for us and find out the details ie rooms, rent and when it is available. If the rent is way too high we will not bother to look but if it is say $100 -150 above what we want to pay then we will look. Sometimes they will come down alot when you negotiate sometimes not. Also it depends on the length of the lease, how much you can pay in advance,  how desperate they are to rent, if any work needs doing etc. It will vary on every house you look at. Sometimes if you see a house you can ask the owners if they are thinking of renting. Often a family will own several houses in one street and will be willing to move out to rent their house out!

The things we need to look for are security, power supply, accessibility and size, flooding potential and then the nice features like a garden!

These are not the houses we looked at just examples of what it is like to see the signs!!!

This was a funny one I saw on a website!

 

 We came back positive but very tired. The difficult part is when we hear the rent for each of the potential houses and if it is in our range. Hopefully tomorrow we will have some more on our potential list.