It looks like we have an exchange date on the flat! This Wednesday, wehopes! So before this blog descends into DIY and IKEA and such, here's something cool.

Paris Hilton step back - yours truly is now the star of an internet movie. No night vision necessary, as this is no ordinary boring sex tape - I have just uploaded my first video onto vzaar, the awesome video hosting website for ebay. My starring role is as 'awkward one handed DVD case opener', and believe it or not, it took me a couple of takes to get even that right.

Me mhyere, and mhyere, and mhyere. If you say you like my vid, I could win a very cool camera and stuff! To be fair, there's a lot better videos on there, but hey, I buy lotto tickets too. Ever the optimist.

If you're selling anything, try it out. After you get over the echo of your own loud voice in your flat, and after you say 'um' for the hundredth time, you get used to it!

Oh, and if you're looking for a Shrek DVD, you now know who to come to.

Things are chugging along slowly with the flat purchase - it looks like we'll have an exchange date next week. We've got a moving date already, as we've had to give advance notice to our landlady, and as the previous tenants of our current flat found us to take over from them, we've done the same.

I don't very much like estate agents, but I have a particular hatred for Foxtons. Before we went looking for our flat, I was warned by friends and also saw many a comment online about the exorbitant charges and arrogant attitudes of this company. We found our current flat on the Gumtree, and after hearing from a colleague that Foxtons expected her to pay an 'admin fee' of £300 for them to find her a rental flat, that sealed it. I put an ad up on gumtree, and saved myself and the prospective tentant a couple hundred squid.

A friend has also been looking for someone to take on one of the rooms in her flat around the same time, and had been telling me about the appalling responses she'd been getting. I thought she'd been exaggerating, but some of the messages (reproduced here for your amusement) were pretty awful.

I put the ad up lat around midnight on a Sunday, to get my first responses early the next morning. It started off pretty well, actually:

Hello,

I recently saw the ad for the flat on Gumtree, would it be possible to arrange a viewing for Saturday 1st September?

Thanks, A

Quick, straightforward, eloquent - I saw myself having some serious problems choosing from the masses of interesting, interested parties. More emails started rolling in; I realise I may have jumped the gun.

hi to whom it may concern i saw your ad and am very intrested i was just wondering if you would accept dss please get bk thank you miss B.

hi i think there's a big caps lock button on your keyboard that needs a little loving and some punctuation wouldn't hurt ps don't hold your breath ok.

HELLO IM REALLY INTERETED IN YOUR FLAT CAN YOU SEND ME YOUR PHONE, I WILL CALL YOU WHEN CAN I SEE THIS? THANK YOU C

B, meet C. C, meet B. Together, you'll work out how to write an email correctly, yeah?

Hi Nathalie, Thank you for your prompt reply. The flat seemed great but unfortunately we need to move in by the end of September at the latest. Good luck for renting the flat. Regards, D

That's not my name, and the ad said October. Time waster.

"to the (very nice) landlord" - In Ref to the Gumtree Advertised Flat Dear Madam/Sir,

I'm very interested in your property near Canada Water.

However could you please specify whather the property will be available
from 19/September or 19/October as it seems unusuall that landlord look for
tenants nearly 2 months in advance.

Kind regards,
E
000 000000

"to the person who seems to doubt everything I've put in this ad" - you are a knob. I bet you talk with inverted commas too.

I>#039;d like to request more details about this property.I>#039;d like to arrange a viewing of this property. Prefered any time.

Foregoing whatever's going on with your email dealing with apostrophes, prefered (sic) any time? That's like, I would prefer that I come over, say, whenever. Like, preferably sometime. Is sometime good for you?

It's not big, and it's not clever, to laugh at these people. I don't send out emails expecting them to be published online, either. But even after being appalled at my friend when she wouldn't even open an email from a prospective flatmate if they didn't use an intelligent enough subject line, I found I fell into the same behaviour, easily ignoring the lazy emails, feeling insanely grateful for the good ones.

And here, the winner, who responded to all correspondence quickly, showed up for the viewing, and got back to me the very next day to arrange to pay some of the deposit as a holding fee. A lovely couple, who are now moving in to a flat that has really been pretty good to us; who I hope will do the same as us and the couple before us, and use the low rent to save up for a deposit on a little flat for themselves.

Hi Natalie, We saw the advert of your flat on gumtree. We are a professional couple and are very interested after seeing your flat. We were hoping it's still available, can we come and view it? Our numbers are Xxx: 000 0000000 and Xxxx: 000 0000 Many Thanks Xxxxx

Yes! Human-style email writer, COME ON DOWN!