House Hunters International

We all know how I feel about moving.  I do it a lot and actually enjoy the house/apartment hunting, the cleansing of clutter that comes with packing and the best part, the setting up of a new home.  Which always includes shopping and shopping is one of my great loves.  But, we also know how I feel about this move.  The forced move.  The "I haven't even been in my house 10 months and I have to do it all again?" move. But I have gotten over that.  That isn't why this move was proving to be harder than the others.  It is because the business of house hunting is really different here in Chile.  I mean, so very different.   At least this time I knew what to expect.  Or so I thought.

Last year when we came in we knew we had 4 1/2 days to find a place.  I am control freaky enough to know that there was no way that I was going to go back to California and pack up my house if I did not already have a house to move into.  I also knew there was no way I would let B pick out the house without me after I left (he stayed for a bit to work).  Not because we don't agree on what we like (in fact, we have freakily similar taste) but because he doesn't live in the house the same way I do.  And by that I mean, I live there, he just visits us on weekends and some late nights when he is in town.  He just needs a kitchen, a bathroom and a place for his bed.  He doesn't pay attention to the fact that our 18 month old daughter (at the time) could never keep from killing herself on the drop sided staircase that looked so cool.   So, 4 1/2 days.  We were expecting it to be a whirlwind of house, house, house, lunch, house, house, drinks, dinner.  Repeat for 4 days.  Nothing even remotely close to that occurred.

The day we came in the real estate agent had not lined up a single house for us to see.  Nothing.  We had just flown all night, freshened up at the hotel and were ready to get this adventure started.  A bit jet lagged by the 5 hour time difference, but fueled by the excitement of finding our new home.  And yet, we did not see a single house that day.  I couldn't understand how this had happened.  They knew we were coming, they knew we were here a short time.  They knew we needed a house.  But the need didn't matter.  It's just how things are done.   We saw a total of about 10 houses in 3 days - respectable.  Especially when you consider we only saw 2 houses the second day we were here.  Making that a grand total of 2 houses in 2 days.  Sounds more like vacation for me but when you factor in that B was also working and I had no car, I had a lot of hotel time.  Then we fired our real estate agent and found one that showed us everything she could in the last 2 days.  We found a house.  I went home happy.  (I will skip the fact that they then sold the house we rented out from underneath us and we had to go call back all of the other houses we might be happy with to find one that still hadn't rented).  UGH!

But I still haven't really made it clear to you how it works here.  Because I still wasn't so sure myself before the last 2 months.  Now I know only too well the system here.  And it still doesn't make sense to me.

Here is how it works in Chile.

1. The house is put up for rent and an agent is signed to represent the seller.  This sounds familiar.

2.  The house is listed on the agents website and probably the real estate site used by almost everyone (very much like realestate.com).  The site has a lot of listing by many agencies and is highly searchable - but it is worthless.  Half of the houses were rented 6 months ago and no one took them down, the other half aren't really available (just checking to see how many bites they can get), and some are actually available but are listed 3, 4 even 5 times with different prices, sq. footage and number of rooms.  And there are no locations listed, no addresses, and certainly no open houses. You really don't get a good idea of what is available and find you can't do this on your own.  So, you get an agent.

3. You have your agent.  Now you can go out and see houses.  But you can only see the houses that your agent represents.  You love the white brick on the corner that has a sign up for rent?  Sorry, listed by another agent.  You will not get to see it.  Not without hiring them.  You either end up seeing only what your agent has, or you have multiple agents.  We had 5.

4.  There is no thing as a lock box here and the real estate agents do not have keys to the houses they represent.  You make appointments with the people who are currently renting the house (or the owners if they live in).  And they are not really happy to be showing the house so you are at their mercy.  Really.  They have to be home to show the house to you, not the other way around like I am used to.  Uncomfortable in a lot of situations.  And you had better be on time - not early, not late - or you are not getting in.  Even if they are home.  They will tell you that you missed your appointment and you can make another.  It makes for a lot of down time and I now appreciate the 1-2 hour window you get in the U.S.  This is the only time in Chile that they are punctual.

5.You also aren't told locations of houses, or even areas that they are in.  Safety issues and that I understand but it makes it hard to rule things out.  Why waste time if the house is on a busy intersection (many that we saw), so far out of the way it would take me forever to get anywhere (a couple) or that it backs up to the busy mall...You are told to meet your agent at their office or an gas station and then you follow them to the house.  You may also not have been told locations because even the real estate agents that have the houses listed don't know where they are.  We got lost. Multiple times.  While following an agent to the house.

6.  Don't expect to do any of this on weekends.  The real estate agents don't work on weekends.  The renters/owners that have to show you the house have plans on weekends and aren't home so it's confined to weekdays.  Around busy schedules.  Are you seeing why we could only see a house or two a day?

7.  You are lucky enough to get into a house.  You are so excited you don't even care what it looks like anymore - you actually got inside.  And then you realize that there may be a reason the renters didn't want to show it.  They don't want anyone to know that they have beat the living daylights out of the inside of this house.  They are trashed.  Very few that we saw were well taken care of.  It's sad really but I guess that happens in the U.S. too.

8.  And now you have found something, within your budget, that you can live with.  There are a few minor tweaks that you need to have done...The 20 year old carpeting (at least it looks 20 years old) needs to be replaced and the walls need to be painted since they let their kids draw on them for the last 5 years.  Simple fixes.  They say yes, that can be done.  Then call you back the next day and say if they are going to do that work, then you have to pay an extra 200,000 pesos a month.  For the life of the contract.  That's $400 a month - for 2 years.  $9600.  For fake wood floors and some paint.  Thanks, we'll pass.

9.  You find another house that might do it.  It is slightly out of your price range but since it hasn't rented in awhile so you offer them what you have set as a budget.  Nope - they RAISE the price.  Not kidding you.  This happened more than once.

10.You keep doing this for 8 weeks.  Over 30 houses.  You are exhausted, frustrated and sure you are never going to find a house.

And then you find a house.  Not through an agent.  Not on the website.  Your neighbor tells you that the neighbor on the other side of her is moving.  That they already bought another house and need to either sell or rent theirs.  She has the keys to the neighbors now empty house and the OK to show it to you.  The house is nice, it has been taken care of, and it fits your things.  The budget is hammered out and you get the keys.  You are now moving next door.  Literally.  After all of that, you are moving next door.  And the rest was just an exercise in patience.

A strange side view of our new house.... - Our old house is on the right side of the white one shown here.