House Snooping

Within the military community, regardless of what your spouses job is, you'll probably have to move house every few years to somewhere completely new...

Now this is unlike moving house the normal way where you get to choose a nice area to live, do a bit of house hunting, plan a few viewings, fall in love with your dream home, make an offer and finally buy the place...

We don’t get to do any of that stuff which I suppose is a blessing in disguise really.

Instead we get told which part of the country/world we’re going to be moving to, we’ll then be given a few choices of houses with a few (and I mean a few) photos of said houses. We then have to note down our first, second and third preferences, submit the form and just hope for the best!

Once we receive notification of the house we'll be moving into, we still won't really know what the house is like because of the VERY few photos that were available. Some of them literally just show a photograph of the front of the house, with no details, pictures or a floorpan.

This is where ‘House Snooping’ comes into play!

It's when you snoop around the outside of a (usually empty) house for a friend and take a few photos/videos in order to give them an idea of what their new home will look like...

I’ve been asked to do this a few times now and it’s actually quite fun! It feels a bit naughty walking around a house, taking photos, looking through the windows and going into the garden. It’s all a bit sneaky in my opinion but it’s very common due to the limited information provided on houses.

I would recommend if you are going to be doing a spot of ‘house snooping’ anytime soon, that you inform the neighbours, otherwise you might just find yourself getting some unwanted attention, maybe even from the police. The neighbourhood watch in military communities has got to be the best in the world!

Trust me, we know EVERYTHING that goes on in the patch...

If you’re not too keen on house snooping yourself though, there is a really good Facebook group that can help... It’s like the house snooping gospel! It’s called 'Married Quarters -r- us' and is a great place to start. It’s quite likely that your new house has already been snooped in the past and is on the group.

You could also use good old fashioned Google Maps to check out your garden size etc on the satellite view.

We were very lucky to already know people living in the areas of our last 3 house moves, so they were able to do a quick house snoop for us and also send us a few details about the local areas etc.

We're now moving up to Glasgow in 2 months time, so if you're already up there and are able to have a quick snoop please let me know!