It's not just amateur landlords who are suffering the current housing market conditions - tenants are having a pretty tough time too, as I have discovered. My hopes of finding a sweet little loft conversion for £200 a week in East London, outlined in Bricks and Mortar last month, have so far come to naught. Like thousands of homeseekers across the capital, I have dashed to viewings after work only to be wholly disappointed at the poor quality of flats on offer and the ubiquity of laminate flooring. Having whinged about the near-extinction of old-fashioned small-time landlords in the East End, I jumped at the chance to view a privately owned one-bedroom flat advertised in Loot.

When I rang the landlord to arrange a viewing, I noticed that he was a bit grumpy but was pleased that he lived on site and sounded quite old and not too precious. Things were looking promising: it was within my original budget (very, very rare), it was in Victoria Park in Hackney, which is one of my top locations (huge leafy park, nice cafés and rows of big Victorian houses), and there would be no agents' fees. As I practically skipped to the viewing, along a gorgeous street of large terraced houses, I realised that the house number I was looking for was above a shop. I remained optimistic because the shop was disused and looked a bit Eighties, the antithesis of the uniform new-builds that I hate.

There was no doorbell so I telephoned the landlord. He answered the door and, although friendly, reeked of stale booze and needed a shave. I was a tiny bit frightened. We walked along a corridor that reminded me of a student hall of residence, with lots of fire doors and a filthy, hardwearing carpet. Blindly hopeful, I trusted that a gem of a flat lay hidden just beyond the next doorway. The truth was somewhat different. The flat was in the basement and looked like a squat. Plaster was crumbling from the walls, bare lightbulbs glared from the ceilings and the oven was standing derelict in the middle of the dirty kitchen. The bedroom was miniscule, with space only for a single bed.

“It's in an all-right state really, it just needs cleaning up,” the landlord informed me, “and the sofabed in the main room is fine to sleep on, I've tried it.” I looked at the brown Seventies sofabed and grotty little kitchen and tried to envisage my life there. “Of course I'll do it up for you in whatever style you like,” he went on, “or you could do it up yourself and live here rent-free while you do it.”

He said that the previous tenants had just moved out; how he rented out the place at all in this state I do not know, let alone for almost £800 a month.

I thought maybe it was just this flat that was particularly bad; could he show me one of the upstairs rooms that he had mentioned? He could, but we had to go into his flat, at the back of the building, to get the keys. “I'll introduce you to my 11 cats,” he said. We arrived in a cramped sitting room, with a sofa that the landlord evidently used as a bed. There were dusty black-and-white pictures of school sports teams and a huge Union Jack hanging on the wall. He asked where I worked and, learning that I worked for The Times, became overtly polite.

The upstairs room made my university bedroom look like a suite at The Dorchester. He touched some distinctly crusty peach-coloured curtains and said: “These are new, actually.” What, new in 1980?

On the way out, the landlord added a final remark that has stayed with me: “I understand that it's a bit rough for a lady who works at The Times. I have all kinds of tenants here that have no respect. The DSS lot are the worst; they let their dogs defecate on the carpet.”

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

• First-time buyer

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers