Visiting the hen house

Few days ago we finally had an opportuity to see our future hen house from inside. We were running excited all over the place, checking all the corners, hugging walls and studying all weird buttons and electronics in the walls. It looks like we're gonna have to change a bit our vision and place the furniture a bit different what we planned at the begining. Luckly we already have new ideas and a lot of inspirations. We were only disappointment with the fact, we still have to wait over two months to move in. We were really hoping for this April. Neverthless I'm extremally happy. I have never been living in a new building. And now, not only it's gonna be a new appartment, we're gonna be living there with Snoepje together. 

Maurice watching our "lazy spot"

How did it actually happen, that we're gonna be renting a new flat? After all Maurice is the only bread-winner right now. The answer is: social housing! In Holland this sector is quite vivid. In our region all the appartments that require an income not bigger than a certain level set by the government, are collected on the Entree website. Every week, there are new properities anounced, but you can react only on two of them (weekly).

What's the whole reacting thing? The time of being written in the system decides who will get the appartment. The longer you're in the Entree, the bigger chances you have. So if you'll find a nice place for yourself on that website, you can report your interest and wait till the end of the week, hoping that you're gonna be on the top of the list of people interested in renting this flat/house.

I heard the best ideas come to your head while in the toilet ;)

Luckly Maurie was written in for already six years. However it still was not enough in most of the cases. After a few months of "hunting" we changed our strategy. We were waiting till the weekend and reacting on the appartments we liked and that didn't have too many reactions yet. Another element of that luck was the fact, that in the Nijmegen's area there are many new appartments being built. Some of these are also announced on Entree, so that means, many new flats are being open within one advertisement. From 36 places in our new building we place the 34th position. Fairly enough. We have our hen house!

That all we had to do was to hand an official document telling the income from last year, sign the contract and wait till the end of construction works. The interesting thing is, though this is a social housing, your income is important only till signing the contract. After that, if you start earning even ten times more, while you're already living there, no one's gonna kick you out.