HOUSE HUNTING IN DAR

Searching for a home is always a stressful experience. There's usually a time constraint (have to be out of the last place and have no where else to live) and if the market is busy places disappear quickly leaving little time to think the big decision through.

House hunting in a third world country, however, brings a whole new level of challenges and frustrations to the experience. Add to this that we are looking for a place that is livable as an expat (we like having running water and don't want chickens running around our yard) but are looking at a range that's significantly lower than most ridiculously overpriced expat homes... basically the result isn't fun.

In Dar, most rental house hunting is done through agents found either through recommendations or through classified ads in expat publications. These agents generally don't have their own vehicles so they make an appointment to meet you at a gas station or somewhere like that and then you drive around to various places together in your car. System isn't really that bad since there isn't much in the way of street signs or house numbers so giving directions to many places is very difficult.

To start with, the agent is generally very late so you sit around in the heat waiting for them. Then they take you on a tour of parts of the city you didn't know existed (and probably could have happily never seen) to look at places that are often out of your budget, horribly located or just horrible. And as though that isn't bad enough, half the time the agents didn't actually bother to arrange the house key so you sit around outside for 20 min and can't even see inside the house.

We were actually qiute lucky with the houses and saw quite a few nice options. The problem is things are being taken up at an astonishing rate... by the time we'd seen a few places (a few adys later) the earlier places were all gone.

This process is frustrating enough in itself (we're both grumpy after two hours of driving around without seeing inside a single house), once you actually find a place you have to try to negotiate. Most owners demand one year up front payment and often a house will need some repairs. So you negotiate how much you want to pay each month, how many months in advance you want to pay and what repairs need to be done (and who will pay for them).

And if you've made it through all that and the house is still available (and you still want to live together) then you finally get to sign a contract, arrange to pay the owner a hell of a lot of money and start hoping and praying the place doesn't fall apart after a month or flood in the rainy season.

It's a lovely process. Fortunately we managed to keep our sense of humor through most of it.

I am thrilled that after only two and a half weeks (that felt more like 2 months) we have found a house we are very happy with. Three bedroom, decent sized garden, full air/con and a landlord that's actually interested in taking good care of the place.

Will post photos next week.

In meanwhile, happy holidays!