Yesterday Steve and I went and saw some potential flats (apartments) here in Reading. It was a bit of an eyeopener to say the least. Remember we currently live in a 4 bedroom 2.5bath house in Buford GA. Needless to say any apartment would be a big change for us, but nothing truly prepared us for what we saw.
Small. Tiny, Minuscule. I didn't know families could live in apartments as small as the ones we saw. But they do. Not organized, they could do with a few trips to the container store in my opinion - but who couldn't (my mother - she owns the whole thing as it is).
We're looking for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath furnished place here within walking distance to the Reading train station - its close to Steve''s office and town center (aka mall/shopping/drugstores and such). A property in a similar area/size city as close to major transport in the US probably would cost us about $100-$1300 depending on how nice it is. The places we looked at yesterday started at 1200GBP or the equivalent to $1800 & that's starting! We saw a place that was 1495GBP / month, which is $2300 a month! Can you imagine what that would get you in the US?! A small mansion in some cities. Maybe in NYC it would just be a run of the mill apartment, but that's NYC.
Reading isn't even a city - though they've petitioned a few times, so they just a town. With a population of 160,000 people it is growing everyday. The closest city size comparison would be Columbus, GA / Aurora, CO / Syracuse, NY / Winston - Salem, NC. They're all around the same size as Reading (I cited a variety of cities based on potential locations of readers of the blog - aka friends and family).
Our favorite place is 1295GBP which equates to $2000/month. Now that does include furnishings, aka beds, dressers, tables, chairs, things like that. But it doesn't cover council tax ($230/month) or utilities. Its available in mid march so we are hoping we can get the go ahead and speak to the landlord to try and work something out (fingers crossed!). We saw a few others for about the same amount, also really close to town but they weren't as nice.
Unfortunately if we don't get one of the ones we saw we may have to fly over again to look at places before we go or stay in a hotel when we move till we find something we like. Judging by our current hotel room we would last maybe 3 days. We would have all of our luggage (5-8 suitcases a piece) with the things we brought over with us.
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