Looking for a new home!

If you have ever experienced relocating to Jakarta then you will understand what a long and tedious job finding a home could be.
It has proved to be a nightmare as we have looked at dozens of houses and apartments in the city. We saw old ones, new ones, big ones, small ones, beautiful ones (out of our budget), ugly ones..... we worked with KOLL and via websites or the local newspaper.

Mike and I thought it was going to be easy, we thought we had it all planned! (Yeah right, who were we kidding!) Not having the girls with us we thought it would be great to live in the CBD area. Lets get an apartment we thought, that would be fun and it would be a nice change after having a big house. Yep, I'll say it again, we thought we had it all planned!

OK, let me explain what Ive learnt in regard to finding a place to call home in Jakarta.

First things first, you have to know what area you want to live in. There seems to be 2 simple choices..... if you have kids then you want to find a house in South Jakarta as thats where all the international schools are. The second choice is quite simple... if you have no kids then you want to live as close to your workplace as possible! So we thought the second choice was good for us as Mike works in the Golden Triangle (CBD) of Jakarta.

Your choice is always centred around the question of " How long will it take me to get to the office?"
If we live in South Jakarta it could take Mike anything from 1 hour to get to work to 2 hours in the rainy season. Imagine 4 hours of your day being stuck in traffic! Forget it!

So we found an apartment in Menteng, 30 minutes from Mike's office. The Ascott Apartments, swimming pool, security, and hey it was serviced (cleaned) everyday oh and not forgetting Mikes preferance in an apartment - a good gym. Did I mention that across the road from it are 2 shopping malls!

It was great, we thought finally we have a place to call home and all those people who live in Kemang (South Jakarta) were bloody crazy!!

BUT wait it didnt end there........ after a week in the apartment I started to feel claustrophobic. I was always complaining about not having my own space or how I couldnt open the window to let the fresh air in (i can hear all you Jakartans laughing) but you know what I mean.
So..... to Mike's dismay we started the house search again.... we looked everywhere in the CBD area, and what we came across was alot of old stuffy houses in need of repair.
We did find a great apartment at the Pakubowono Residence (http://www.pakubuwono-residence.com/intro.html) that was just a little over our budget... that fell through as the tenant couldnt make up their minds on when they wanted to move out.

So guess what? ... yes we ended up going back to one of the first houses we saw (and believe me like alot of other expats in Jakarta) we had looked at over 20 places! AND wait for it... it ended up being in South Jakarta (Kemang).
We love this place, its new, has security and a great pool! At the moment we are waiting for Mikes company to settle up the rent and letter of agreement. BTW did I mention that renting a house in Jakarta requires you to pay at least 2 years of rent in ADVANCE! Crazy i know but ho-hum thank goodness its not coming out of our pockets! Did I also mention that it only took us 40 minutes to get there in peak hour traffic from Mikes office! 40 minutes is way better than an hour!

I will keep you posted on the move in... and the drama of finding furniture!!!