Urgent help please re renting

[halb]

Could someone who knows about renting please tell me what's normal these days?
Have had our "offer accepted" - ie the asking price rent, have signed a good faith letter, paid some fees etc. But have been told we only sign the actual agreement on the day the tenancy starts.
This really worries me because it means we could make all our practical arrangements based on that and have no real security that the tenancy is guaranteed to start.
What's making me more paranoid is that they are not showing it as let agreed on their website.

What can I do? surely I could ask to sign the tenancy agreement now but dated for our startdate.
Help!

I think we signed the tenancy agreement in advance. Why are they not allowing you to sign it until the day the tenancy starts?

We signed ours on the day and received the keys in return. Don't panic. It's not unusual.

Tell the agent it's worrying you that it is not showing as let agreed on the website and ask them to correct it today.

Hmmm, we had a tenant try to say she wouldn't sign the rental contract until day of tenancy (gave some legal flim-flam which I couldn't really follow, it didn't seem very convincing). We told her to get lost and found another one but maybe there was something in it after all. Why not just ask them what the reasoning is?

There is no reason why you have to sign the agreement on the day although, as bitzermaloney says, it's not unusual. How worried you should be depends on your personal situation - if you are a student living out of a rucksack with your parents I would be relaxed. If you have a family and loads of stuff (more likely I guess) I would be very reluctant to let it go to the last minute, there's just too much that can go wrong.