The Search For A House in Karachi Begins

First and foremost we started to search for a place to live and although our aunt offered for us to stay at her sons house, which was next door and empty, we did not want to take the mick. So my cousin took me to a couple of estate agents they had previously used and we got started.

We decided to get a feel of all areas and types of living spaces. We must of seen well over 50 places before we made our decision. Our 2 main options were basically either a flat or a portion of a bungalow. After checking out all the different areas, we had come to the conclusion that we need to stick to the Defence area. Now Defence is where all of the embassies and big time business men are based and is considered one of the safest areas in the city. Although we did check out other areas, but to put it bluntly we just didn’t like them and on top of that my cousins had advised me not to look outside the Defence area.

The estate agents would take us out and show us all the different places available. Now that we had decided to stick to defence this gave us 2 options. All flats in defence are located in commercial areas; a commercial area is basically an area where there are a lot of shops and with shops come people and with people comes noise. Although we saw some OK flats, none of them had running water; all the tenants of that building had to chip in to fill up using a water tanker. I really didn’t like that option, you see I was thinking ahead if I had water tankers and God knows what to worry about, I would barely have time for the business.

This narrowed our options down to bungalow portions. A bungalow portion is basically half of a bungalow and for those of you who have visited the sub continent then you would know that the bungalows and HUGE. After a lot of running around we found our portion and we knew this was it as soon as we walked through the doors, you know you get that feeling sometimes and some things just feel right, well this was one of those times.

Although it was a bit steep, we wanted to be comfortable and it was also only 5 minutes from my cousin’s house so we went ahead with it. Ok just as a word of warning, the way the rent is paid in Pakistan is you generally pay a security deposit worth 2 months rent, which is kept up until the end of your contract, after which the landlord inspects the property and makes sure everything is in order, then the security deposit is returned, which is not a problem and is the usual practice in the UK as well. The bombshell hit when they wanted the whole years rent in advance, you heard it they wanted 12 months rent all in one go and this was the usual practice here.

After a lot of accounting and conferring we went ahead with the deal and finally signed the lease for the place on I think it was the 11^th of February 2007.

For those of you who are familiar with Karachi then I am located 5 minutes from the Saudi Arabian Embassy.