Reminder: There's nothing real about the real estate business

Remember! read "aparment for sale" between the lines

"Clean" is used to describe the place when there's no other good words to use. It means the place is a rat hole but there's no any actual garbage to be picked up on their yellow, plastic floor. "Wow, let's take this one honey, it's already hoovered!" Think about it: who would use the word "clean" to sell an amazing mansion? It's pretty obvious you don't have to step on any broken class or take out the waste paper on your first day in your new home. So, stay away from too underlined "clean" apartments. The same rule applies adds with terms like "ok condition", "carpenter's dream", safe living in one floor", "amazing, colorful athomosphere" or "nice doors in the living room" (this is no fake, I actually saw an add selling the place highlighting the doors, also the only published photo was about the famous entrance to living room)

Obviously price is another thing. Listen and repeat: if it's cheap, there's a reason for it. The place is A. a rat hole, B. Waaaay outside the periphery, you'll see more cows on your way to work than traffic lights. And while the broker starts to drool when he notices you buying into his romantic illusion of "fresh country air, drinking your morning coffee on the portch watching a squirrel making a nest for it's babies...", you really don't want to wake up 4.30 AM to get to work on time. In the long run it can get pretty sad taking your steaming cup out in the pitch-dark, freezing porch, after three hours of sleep, just to notice there's 25 cm of snow on the ground and nobody has ploughed the drive way to main road . And there'll be no any squirrels awake yet that time my friend.

So keep your head cold in apartment hunting! And when finding that dream place of yours, keep your first offer even colder because there are a lot of greedy sellers out there (I know because I'm one of them, € -signs in my eyes almost made all the potential buyers vanish) AND even greedier brokers! The minute you consider making an offer, they are already speed-dialing their travel agency for a nice little vacation with their profit...From YOUR pocket! ;)