LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which I enter house-hunting hell

Much as I hate renting, I detest house-hunting. You spend days studying a property online, drive for hours for a viewing, only to be told, ‘The strip of garden in front of the house is owned by next door. So it isn’t private.’

‘But you knew I have dogs. Why didn’t you state this on the details?’

‘I’m telling you now.’ Viewing a renovation project, I asked the estate agent which direction the garden faced.

‘I’ve no idea.’

I know, cheapskate. Invest in a compass!

I viewed a flat in Hackney, was about to offer when the estate agent told me, ‘The vendors will be removing the glorious mantelpiece.’

I was reminded of when I moved into a farmhouse in Somerset, only to find the vendors (ghastly couple) had removed the butler’s sink and fire grate, ripped half the brass light fittings from the ceilings leaving dangling chains, and had dug up plants from the garden!

Much as I hate renting, I detest house-hunting. You spend days studying a property online, drive for hours for a viewing

I have a mortgage offer in place, but it expires every six months, meaning I must start the whole laborious process again. Every time I find a property, after a fee of £175 the lender rejects it for…

1 Being next to a dentist.

2 Having two front doors.

3 Being a freehold flat (this means there is no onus on anyone to upkeep the building).

4 Being next to a pub (this was a Georgian house on a church square in Harrogate; I’d have thought being next to a pub was a plus).

5 Being too small! I found a studio (dear god, what have I come to?) flat in Islington, the most I can afford, but was told it didn’t meet the required square footage. I found a stone cottage in the Black Mountains near Hay-on-Wye (I’m Welsh, so figure I won’t be stoned), but was told I wouldn’t be able to rent it out as a holiday home to pay for itself as I’m not a home owner, and have never been a landlord.

I reckon I could make a better fist of it than the woman who owned the Georgian Airbnb in Edinburgh I rented (£900 for two nights) to attend my niece’s wedding. She left the fridge with a milky crust, the heating switched off, a plastic tablecloth over the lovely table, and when I phoned to complain there was no cafetiere, said, ‘It was stolen.’

I’ve viewed a house I love, with a walled garden and a greenhouse (I have an ambition to re-create the Pig hotel near Bath and grow my own chillies), but am told by the lender they are not keen on it having a septic tank. I don’t believe there is one house deep in the Dales that doesn’t have a septic tank.

I’ve written long and hard on the travails of renting. I realised the other day I am worse off, infinitely more precarious, than my former London cleaner, who has never opened a bank account, never earned enough to pay tax, has children and grandchildren, and lives in a beautiful council house in Stoke Newington near Whole Foods Market and Rasa vegetarian Indian restaurant.

(There is zero decent food where I live; when, eating out before seeing Oppenheimer, Nic complained her vegan burger contained cheese, the waitress replied, ‘We didn’t notice that on the packet.’)

Look at David 1.0. A housing association flat a mile from Westminster, when I have to fork out £400 a night to stay at the Standard hotel on the Euston Road, which is noisy and stuffed to the rafters with bearded hipsters! Perched in the bar, writing, I can be heard to wail, ‘Stop talking and turn the music off! I need to concentrate!’

I think the most poignant detail to emerge about the death of Sinéad O’Connor last month was that she was found in her rented flat in Brixton.

Glorious talent and hard work that clearly went unrewarded when someone who runs a bank leaves in shame with millions.