Oh, the property market. Sigh. And specifically the York property market. Hoping people can offer some tips.
[Warning: long brain dump follows...] 
Our situation is this... we need to relocate to somewhere around York this year, and preferably earlier rather than later. We want to buy a house and have a preferred area in mind but there's not much available, and we're quite fussy on a few aspects, so goodness knows how long it'll take for the 'right' place to come up. (To say nothing of all the competing buyers and the survey and chains and the rest of the purchase process... it's a wonder anyone ever manages to move house.)
So, despite our initial dislike of the idea, we're gradually coming to the conclusion that we should rent at first instead. Obviously that would simplify our own house sale, and would give us a chance to get to know our new location that bit better (although we've already done a good bit of familiarisation... and I'm getting impatient now!). Paying rent feels like a big waste of money when compared with putting the same cash into a mortgage... so easy to spend around £1k/month on rent alone, which comes as a bit of a shock when we used to pay not much over half that in our old area before we bought our current house. But I know we're effectively buying convenience (or feasibility) and many people are in a worse position than we are, so I shouldn't grumble.
The main difficulty is that we want as little delay as possible to buying somewhere. Yes, we'd rather be putting the cash into a mortgage, but also we'd much rather get settled in our eventual home as soon as possible. Not only that, but interest rates are already rising and forecast to go up further, so it would be good to avoid ending up with a higher mortgage rate by the time we find somewhere to buy.
I thought the best compromise would be to go for somewhere with an initial 6 month rental contract, but it turns out these are like hen's teeth. I suppose the vast majority of landlords just want long term prospects and less churn to deal with. I was expecting it to be a much smaller range of rentals but going by the usual property portals, there was literally only one (unsuitable) place listed as a short term let in our (reasonably wide) search area.
So getting to the point (well done and thank you if you're still with me), I'm wondering if anyone on here has experience of the rental market in York and surrounding areas, and specifically with regard to terms shorter than 12 months. I seem to be getting mixed messages from estate agents as to how rigid the initial term is, and some listings specify 12 months and others just say "long term" (which maybe means the same thing, but I don't know if that's a universal interpretation). We did enquire about one house recently that would have suited us nicely, and the agent curtly informed us that the landlord was looking for at least 1-2 years' tenancy and there was a big enough list of prospective tenants interested to be assured of that, so good luck and push off (not quite verbatim, but that's how it came across).
It feels like a bit of a hole in the market, short-term rentals somewhere between the days/weeks approach of Airbnb etc and the standard rental terms of 12+ months, which the likes of Rightmove deal with. I wondered if there might be the odd place to be found in Facebook groups and the like, but they can be hard to trawl, and it feels a bit risky. Not sure if there are any other sites we're missing.
I'm starting to think we'll have no option but to go with a 12-monther at the lower end of our budget, but thought it worth asking here just on the off-chance that others have been through the same situation. Thanks in advance for any pearls of wisdom that you can share!