The Trouble With Flat Hunting

After moving out of the family home, it would appear that the task of finding a flat has progressively gotten more difficult with every move. This is where I started out, my teenage haven.

My first home away from home was a strictly student affair. A shared living and kitchen area with 6 separately locked en-suite bedrooms. Easily acquired by waltzing into the reception asking 'Is it possible to rent a room out for the next few months?'. Contract signed, all I needed was a guarantor and hurrah I got myself my own space. Even though it wasn't all that homely, it was a nice accommodation to spend a few months during my studies.

My second flat was picked out by someone else and I didn't do any of the search work. I viewed the flat after my flatmate had chosen it and then signed the contract. Hassle free. If there was any mention of a guarantor I never knew about it.

Flat three was also easy, I moved in with other friends as someone else was moving out. I signed a contract and that was that.

After flat three, flat hunting became a little stressful. I was moving cities and also moving in with my partner, at that time we had been dating 2 years. The initial looking for flats on-line and phoning for a viewing was easy. Once it was decided what flat we loved most we put down a deposit.

The way Ream ,our letting agency, worked was that we needed a guarantor who had a specific amount of money, either in the bank or in wages who could pay for our rent should we fail to. We were all credit checked (guarantor too) and it seemed to take ages for the application process too go through. This meant an entire month worrying if we would actually get the flat. As this was my first time going through a letting agency I was unsure of how likely it would be that we would get our application rejected and so I fretted. A lot. But it all went well and we moved in.

I recommend Ream to anyone looking to rent out in Edinburgh. They were really good at fixing any in flat problems that occurred during our tenancy.It was a pretty nice place too, we even had our own balcony!


Then came the big move abroad. This is an exception to my case as we didn't have to pick out any accommodation for ourselves, it was provided.

It was fairly stressful moving away from everything familiar and getting  all our stuff to come with us.

Now comes the most difficult flat hunting experience yet. We went back to Edinburgh and I researched on-line and phoned around but when it came down to viewing day many viewings were cancelled as they were being taken off the market for their new delighted tenants. We were left with two flats to look at and we applied to one. This agency didn't take the familiar holding fee then go through the application, they wanted references and an application sent to them instead. Taking the time to gather references meant that we were too slow and the flat was leased to another. But on the plus side we had all our references ready for next time. The second round of viewings came about and I wasn't even sure the man showing us around one of the flats was part of a legit letting company. As that flat wasn't as nice as the pictures I didn't have to worry. The second viewing was perfect and we wanted it so we found out that this letting agency gathered lots of applications over a week and let the landlord decide. It meant that our chances of getting that flat were very slim. In fact we didn't get it. I read a sad little email in my inbox:  'I'm sorry to inform you...' and 'Sorry for any disappointment caused'. They were nice about it but we are now back to the start of the square and we are back in France. Looking for flats in Edinburgh and asking family members to pretty please go and view a flat that we really really like. So I am hoping that tomorrows flat is perfect and that this letting agency has a put a holding fee down-sort out the application later policy.

So basically if  you  are a potential tenant looking to rent out accommodation through an agency I recommend that as soon as you know you will be looking for a flat, gather old landlord references and have your current/most recent employer write a reference. Having these handy will help you get applications in quicker.When you find a flat on-line and phone in for a viewing (highly recommended) ask what the application process is like. eg. Do they want a holding fee, or do they let the landlord chose from a bunch of applications.