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Hey! My name's Liam Dryden and today I've been roped into How to Adult or Adult to give you some advice a new apartment, or as we say it where I'm from, a new flat. If you want to know my credentials for speaking on the subject, in the past seven years, I've lived in six different places, so I do this quite a lot. And in that time I've learned a lot of valuable points that I can hopefully share with you and make your experience a little easier. 

Now the first thing I want you to think about when looking for a new place is the tri-force, not this one. There are three key components you need to think about when looking for a new place. 

Affordability
Availability 
And the concept of a 'dream flat'

Affordability is obviously a property that's within your price range. 

Availability is obviously whether or not it's taken yet or if it's in high demand. 

And the dream flat is obviously everything you want in a flat, like looking nice, in a safe area, good transport links, all that stuff. 

Sadly, in the realistic world we live in, you have to come to terms with giving up one of these things. You can only ever really have two. 

You can have a flat you can afford, that's available, and might not be the flat you want it to be. You can have your dream flat, it's currently available, but it's going to cost you a lot. Or you'll find your dream flat, in your price range, but it's already taken. 

Finding a flat that does encompass all these things is a miracle. It's very rare and I wish you luck in actually doing it, but in the meantime come to terms with the fact that you can only have two of these three things. 

If you're moving to or living in a big city, you're always going to find that there's high demand for places. And lots of landlords prefer to go through letting agencies instead of dealing with you directly, as well. And when it comes to property viewings, a lot of letting agencies like to do something called group viewings. Which means you're kinda wandering around trying to get a feel for the place, but you're also staring down the competition because they might take your new home. A lot of places will have you go to their office to sign the lease and make the payments. And sometimes you're going to have to race across the city against the other group that you were doing the viewing with in order to get there first. Honestly, sometimes it's a bloodbath. So when you are viewing a new place, especially if you're doing a group viewing, you have to learn to be quite decisive quite quickly. The best way to be decisive when looking at a new flat is to go in with a list of expectations, literally. Have a checklist, whether it's mental or physical, and see whether or not this flat that you're looking at means your expectations. Is it close or easily accessible to your place of work or school? Is it within your price range? Or does it have space for you to do the work you wanna do at home? For example, I make YouTube videos so I want to have a good, well-lit space where I can do that. 

If the flat meets at least fifty percent to seventy five percent of the requirements on your checklist, just put in a note of interest. Just do it. That way you can get the ball rolling just in case nothing better comes up. And fifty percent might seem a little low on your list of expectations, but that ties in with the concept of the dream flat. It's... it's... it's a difficult concept. 

When you're viewing a flat, you should visualize the space as to how you would be living in it. Not so much as to how it is in the moment. Like if the person who is currently living there has ugly furniture and like half-naked posters of people, like, don't let that effect your visualization of how you would use the space. The best thing about moving into a new space is the chance to start over and make it yours. You're only there for a few months. So go in with your list of requirements. But also start visualizing yourself living in the space, sharing with your friends, and generally just making yourself more cozy. 

And speaking of friends, that brings me onto the final point. Have friends! Until you're earning a larger, more stable option for renting is to share with other people. And it's better when those are people that you know and like. On top of that, flat hunting becomes so much easier when you do it as a team. Before I moved down to London, I was still living in Scotland so it was impractical for me to constantly come on down here and view new places. Most of them would be gone by the time I got here. So what I would do is search for flats online, find some good results, send them to my friend and now flat-mate Tom, who was living in London at the time. He would go view them and report back to me. And that's how found this place. So the flat hunting game is much easier when you have more of a team dynamic going on. It's also good team building exercises to set up a  great dynamic with you and your new flatmate. 

There's a lot more I can say on choosing the people you live with, 'cause that's a whole other issue. Maybe I'll come back to "How to Adult" with a video on that. 

So that's the best flat-hunting advice I can offer. I wish you luck out in the big bad world of property market. Just take note of the big three: remember the triangle, remember the checklist, and have friends. I know a lot of you will be looking for new places right now around the start of the school year, so I wish you the best of luck. If you want to see more of me, you can find me at youtube.com slash Liam and I hope to see you all there. And if you don't want to see any more of me, FINE! Emma and/or Michael will be returning next week. Thanks again folks, best of luck out there and I'll see you whenever.