That’s good news Desdemona.
Well it’s been an education discovering how letting agents work. Basically their rules make it impossible for my family to rent anything through their channels. I thought I’d found a godsend solution when I discovered that a little cottage belonging to a friend of mine was becoming available mid January. Affordable rent.
But my friend was a hard nosed businesswoman before she retired, and a stickler for doing things by the book. She can also be a bit salty if not treated carefully. She told me they were welcome to rent it but would have to go through the agents. Agents said they didn’t meet their requirements. Zero room for negotiation.
After much agonising, I wrote my friend a letter explaining that I didn’t want to push this and damage our relationship - we volunteer together on a local committee and have to have a good working relationship - but I HAD to ask her for her help, because the agents would not accept my family without her intervention, even with us offering to put everything in our name and pay the rent ourselves (with the family paying us back privately). I’ve told her we will even offer to pay the whole year’s rent upfront to remove all risk if necessary.
She wrote back saying she will meet with the agents and discuss, so now all I can do is cross everything.
The problem is that this is a small, affluent village in a National Park. Rentals are rare as hens teeth and very expensive, and there is always a queue of people wanting them. If this doesn’t come off, they’ll have to move elsewhere and start again. With the mum settled in a job here, the daughter at the local college, and the dad just started work this week (thanks to word of mouth - supportive village) it would be so awful for them to have to uproot and start from scratch again after everything they’ve been through.