News

The ad seemed too good to be true.

I had been cruising around the Internet for days. Avoiding scam-artist agents. Sifting through uninspiring listings on craigslist.org, gumtree.com, propertyfinder.com, findaproperty.com and hopelesslycrappyapartmentsyoucantaffordanyway.com.

And then I saw it: a two-bedroom, two-bathroom "luxury" furnished flat in the heart of South Kensington. There were two thumbnail photos of a light-filled living room with expensive-looking sofas, and a kitchen worthy of Nigella herself. On the table was a vase of calla lilies - my favourite. Not that I can afford them.

If only, I sighed, and was about to click past when I froze at the price: £250 a week (about $450 - practically free).

"Call James," the ad said. I looked around my home office to see if anyone was watching. The ad had just been posted this morning. Maybe if I moved fast ...

I fired off an e-mail: "Two clean, quiet, non-smoking, gainfully employed, tediously responsible Canadian expatriates, about to get kicked out of fantastic central apartment with 'mate's rates' arrangement. Not a stick of furniture to our names. Dates flexible. Bills flexible. Parking flexible. Bodies less flexible. Situation desperate."

Why the anxiety, you might ask? The entire Western world is apparently in the middle of a real-estate slump, which means a plethora of cheap housing flooding the market, right?

Wrong, at least as far as renters are concerned. No one (including myself) wants to buy in a market that looks like it is sliding into the primordial economic muck. This means that the people with decent digs are digging in, fuelling a landlord's market.

And so I prayed: Take pity on me, James, owner of unbelievably under-market-value flat in the poshest area of the city. A couple of hours later, a garbled missive arrived, unpunctuated and misspelled. James wanted to know if I could afford to pay the standard six-week deposit (he was now based in Liverpool and did not want to come to London unless it was going to be what he called a "furtile endeavour"). "I would like you to show me a kind of proof of evidence that you have the money at our disposal before I can come down," he wrote. "i hope you understand me well."

I wrote back telling him I would be happy to fax him a copy of a bank statement showing I was good for the funds. It was about $3,000 he was asking for after all - not $30,000. But this was not good enough for James.

He wrote back another e-mail, requesting that I "proceed to the nearest Western Union," transfer the funds to my boyfriend's name, then scan a copy of the transfer form, so James could confirm the money was available. "After I confirm, you can go pick up the money and then we can meet for the viewing."

Huh?

That night over dinner I was anxious - how were we going to meet all of James's demands in order to secure what appeared to be the last lovely, cheap apartment in London? Patrick was dismissive. "Guy's obviously crazy. Forget it."

He was right of course. The place seemed too good to be true because it probably was. I resolved to leave well enough alone.

Whereupon I took my BlackBerry into the bedroom and sent James a message asking if he could show us the flat on Monday evening at 7. "I won't be bringing the deposit," I wrote sensibly, "as we would need at least a night to think about it before handing over the money."

The response was quick and cutting: "now i am sure you are just like every other people who waste my time and seems like you cannot afford the deposit."

Well, I thought. I never!

The next morning as I scanned the paper looking for real-estate classifieds, I came across a British study that reported that eight out of 10 children polled "find life too complicated" and a third of them are "worried about the credit crunch."

I thought back to the blissful rent-free days of my own childhood. A time when $100 seemed like a fortune and bills were a foreign concept. One of my earliest memories was of listening to my parents argue about car insurance and thinking, "I'm never having that." Too boring.

But there is nothing boring about facing eviction onto wet and dismal streets, especially when your parents have already booked their flights over for Christmas.

So I dragged myself into a rental estate agent's office up the road and prepared to be properly swindled. The agent was a well-mannered young man from Manchester. Even in his navy suit and tie, he didn't look a day over 16.

That very afternoon he showed me five apartments in my price range. Three were dismal, one disgusting and one I thought maybe I could live in for a week if I closed my eyes, held my breath and underwent a lobotomy. The agent seemed apologetic. "It's a tough market," he said.

As we were driving back, I told him the story of the apartment that seemed too good to be true. The teenager from Manchester kept his eyes on the road. But I'm pretty sure I could read his thoughts: "Suckerrrr."

All he said, though, was: "Where did you say you were from?"