House size/Rent in south west London

Hello friends,

This website is a super resource and has answered so many of my questions just by reading all you nice people'e posts.One of the best I have ever seen.

My wife and I will be moving to the UK in 2-3 months and we are looking to rent a 2-3 bedroom in the south west greater london area.My office is in Uxbridge.We are roughly looking at paying 1000 pounds/month .We have some reasonably large furniture with us.Can anyone tell me what are good areas to live /look for houses and approximately what would be the sq.footage of those houses?

thanks a million to anyone who can help
rvish

Try this website
http://www.findaproperty.com/

For Uxbridge specifically:
http://www.findaproperty.com/area0520.html

I think 1000 pounds a month for a 2-3 bedroom flat in that area of London might be just doable, but it depends on the area.  SW London (Wimbledon, Twickenham, Richmond) is more expensive than West London (Uxbridge is considered West London.)  Don't forget that you also have to pay the council tax for your flat, which can be anywhere from 500 to over 1500 GBP per year.  The the findaproperty website lists council tax bands so you have an idea of the range.  The council tax is based on the value of the property, so if the rent is higher, the council tax will be higher.  Also, properties are much smaller here than in the US.  I don't know square footage exactly.  When we were looking at properties, I measured all the doors to make sure we could get our furniture in (I had measured the doors at our old house so as to know what I needed.)  Many had narrow doors and/or stairs and would not have worked for our furniture.

Good luck!

Little St Leonards Road, London SW14
£213 pw unfurnished, 2 bedroom apartment
A ground floor conversion flat with garden. Spacious, light, high ceilings, available immediately. Two good size bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, reception room. Mortlake Station within minutes walk away and the Upper Richmond Road West for all High Street amenities. Available immediately
http://www.findaproperty.com/cgi-bin/agent.pl?agentid=2819&opt=prop&pid=132977

above is one advert in a nice area and on the right side of london for you.    if you go to this site and page it gives you an agent, try their own site for rentals in other areas,    good luck with your hunting.

Hello, rvish! Best of luck in your house hunt. I hope it will be useful to you to hear our story about renting in London.  
We rented a beautiful unfurnished flat in north London for about a year and a half. Before we moved in, we had to supply a lot of money -- the equivalent of 3 months' rent -- but only 1/3 was called "first month's rent." The other 2/3 was called damage deposit. The terms of the lease specified that we were to return the property to the landlord at the end of our tenancy in Exactly the same condition as it was when we moved in. (This is standard.) To ensure this, the landlord hired an "independent" surveyor to make a detailed inventory of the unfurnished property before we moved in.   The document he produced was several pages long and catalogued every room in detail, every nick and scratch -- of which there were very few: when the previous tenants had left, the flat had been "done up" with new paint and carpet, etc. When we moved out of the property, the inventory person reappeared and went over everything again, clucking, shaking his head, acting as if we'd wrecked the place. :-/  This time, the landlord and the surveyor called each other by their first names and treated us like bad children. [smiley=evil.gif]  We were flummoxed!  The inventory person actually said to us, "You do want to return the property to Fiona (the landlord) in the same condition as you received it, now don't you?" But that would have been impossible because the flat had been perfectly pristine. The oven had never worked, but we got no compensation for that. We had been reasonably careful with the place and had paid the equivalent of $600 to have it professionally cleaned before we moved out -- but of course it didn't look Exactly as it had when we'd taken possession -- we had lived there for almost 2 years!  In the end, the landlord  kept nearly all of the monies marked "damage deposit."    
Our British daughter-in-law was horrified by all this and asked around only to find out that landlords (including a good friend of hers!) expect to keep the deposits and to redo their property every time there is a change of tenant. That way, tenants never (well, hardly ever)  get their money back.The cost of repainting and even recarpeting is less than the deposit -- so....
What to do? Other folks on this site may have better ideas, but for myself, I'd strongly urge you to bring this up directly (not confrontationally) with any estate agent you work with. Let them know that you know. Perhaps there is a way to alter the lease so that it isn't so unfair. (We didn't have a clue.) Beware of a place that's been recently redone -- new carpets, new paint.  Before you sign anything or give them any money, talk to the landlord and/or estate agent in plain, blunt language about the conditions of renting and about what you'll be held responsible for. Also, attend both inventories, infuriating as it may be at the end. It may help. I hope so -- we'd love to see others better protected and prepared than we were!  (IMHO, the professional cleaning services aren't worth the money -- we used one because of time, but they didn't do any better a job than I could do myself.) I hope you'll post your progress. I'll have my fingers crossed for you.   [smiley=sunny.gif]Katelyn