'Finding accommodation in Ireland is harder than finding a good man'
It took three scams, five viewings, and many hours to find a room to rent - and I'm one of the lucky ones
Students up and down the country are frantically searching for accommodation. I went through the same process in July when I moved from Dublin to work as a reporter for Iconic Media in Limerick. Despite getting in before the student accommodation search, my quest for a room was not without misadventure.
The first house viewing I attended was near the Limerick's Crescent shopping centre. The tenants did not know who the landlord was and the gaff was covered in black mould - which was not evident in the pictures posted in the listing. I should have realised there would be a catch involved, with the rent as low as €350. The girls who showed me the viewing said they had given a viewing to a woman before me, who said that she and her friends would take every room in the house - making it unlikely that there would be any space for me.
The next viewing was worse again. A man in his 30s showed me a smelly room and rhymed off a list of terms and conditions. The man - who was not the landlord - said I was to use the washing machine no more than once a week, that I was not permitted to have any overnight guests - not even my parents - and that I should limit the time I spend in the kitchen. Before I was presented with this litany of regulations, I complimented him on the cleanliness of the house’s downstairs, to which he replied: “thank you. My wife loves to clean.”
Disaster struck again that day when I was contacted by an assured scammer who saw my post on Facebook seeking accommodation. The man was offering an apartment on the very street that I work at and the rent was reasonable. There was one catch though - he was out of the country and could not show me the property. When I questioned him on this, he said I could go and look at the outside of the flat.
In the second attempt to scam me, I was asked to pay a “viewing fee” of €80 to view the apartment. When I said that this was out of the question and sounded like a scam, the trickster said: “I will rather spend the little time I have on earth lonely than to rip you off”. All of this to say, I was not allowed to see the accommodation without paying a fee. It is little wonder if the apartment was available for rent at all.
On the third go around, a man would not give me the exact address of the listing. Instead he said he would pick me up in his car at a shopping centre. The same man also asked me to confirm if I was single - three separate times. I thought to myself: Is this a dating app or a housing application? I declined to attend the viewing, for fear of kidnap.
I was amazed at how obvious these scams were but I did think to myself - if I was an international student who did not know how the accommodation system works in the country, or if I was desperate for a place to live, it would be easier to fall for these types of tricks.
Another house viewing I attended was hosted by a wellness guru. No sooner was I in the door, but he started giving out about how he was inundated with applications by Ukrainians to view the house. It was a shame that all the meditation and yoga he was doing didn’t help him cultivate more tolerance.
The second last house viewing I went to seemed right enough - however, I would have been the only girl in the house, when I personally prefer to live with at least one woman. Call me old fashioned, but while the men made me feel welcome, they were quite a bit older than me and I would have been more comfortable living in a girls’ house, no matter how nice they were. The man's child would also be visiting regularly to stay at the weekend - which obviously was not a problem, but was not ideal either - speaking as a woman in her 20s who might be going out on the weekend.
By the time I came to the last house I was exhausted and dejected. I had spent the day in Limerick going up and down estates and hadn’t found one house that I wanted to live in.
At long last lady luck smiled on me when I went to view my current house - where I now live with two other women. I immediately knew that I wanted to take it. The girls and I had a good rapport and the place was clean.
While I went through ordeals to find accommodation - I count myself lucky. I have a roof over my head, and I can afford to live independently from my parents, which has become a privilege in this country.
My father said to me on the way home from the viewings: you will kiss many frogs before finding a prince, and see many bedsits before finding liveable conditions to rent in.