Moving into rental sight unseen

[Ilkleymoor]

We are hoping to move from South east o north east as soon as possible but it's a right faff trying to get a property. I was up last week to sort childcare so saw a place then and we've been up enough to know the areas and type of housing we want.

One estate agent has already said they only allow rentals that have been viewed in person but this is likely to mean we will never move as I can't drop everything immediately. Is it worth jut calling every other estate agent to say how keen we are and see if they are flexible?

We did a similar move last year. Although I did find one letting agent prepared to 'allow' a video viewing I ended up booking travel and time to go and spend a solid Saturday viewing whatever was available then. It was a bit scary as I had no idea even 3 days before what I'd be viewing but ended up booking to see four houses on the Saturday. Two of which we put our names forward to rent and got 'preferred tenant' for both of them. Only I did the viewings (a friend came with me) as it was too much hassle for DH and DD to come too.

However, we weren't planning to rent long term - this was a temporary thing for up to a year (we were hoping for six months but no one would let for less than a year) so we weren't looking for perfection, just a roof over our heads to enable us and our stuff to get there.

It was very very competitive trying to find somewhere to rent, so I can understand them being a bit wary of someone who hasn't actually viewed the property. Basically, in the area we were looking, there were a lot of applicants for each property and we didn't want anything to discount us in the landlords' mind.

Sounds like I just need to get on with it! Can see it from their point of view. There are so few suitable at the moment, it's a bit frustrating. On my way to see one today. There is another near by but couldn't get an appointment as tenants not out yet - was going to look at the area and see th outside of the house as th internal layout is better for us while the one I'm seeing is slightly smaller although Nicer area.

We're renting to move and looking to buy but realistically we'll be here a year. Hopefully the effort I'm making will persuade them to give us a chance to get up for viewings!

Yep we're going to end up renting for at least a year. We'd hoped it would be less but we're now six months into tenancy and only got an offer accepted on a house to buy a couple of weeks ago. So it's going to be about nine months into tenancy before completion we think, then we need to do some work to the house before moving so it'll probably take most of the year's tenancy. There's very little coming on market to buy so we had four months of basically twiddling our thumbs and refreshing Rightmove!

The rental isn't great - we have stuff still in boxes everywhere and the garage is full of furniture because we couldn't fit it into the house - but it's a base to explore the area and get a school place.

Well we can have today's rental if we want it but now I'm scared to say yes! It's a great area, right by parkz beach, cafes, shops, transport. The house is very well looked after but it's a tiny new build so even though it is two bedroom and an office upstairs, we would have to be brutal around furniture and put stuff in storage.

But we also really want to move and get our next stage going. Aaarggh.