Hubby and I have rented at various times in our lives - how easy and/or quick it's been to find a rental has depended on our personal circumstances and the rental market itself.
Rentals were hard to come by when we were young and had no rental history (1990s), so we had to rely on the landlord taking a punt with us. We kind of had to 'sell' ourselves as ideal tenants to the property manager (hoping that he'd relay all our selling-points to the landlord
). We'd only ever lived with our parents but I think the fact that we had good, secure, well respected jobs with good incomes and that we had just become landlords ourselves helped win him over. We also didn't have any pets and wanted a long-term lease. Our personal presentation was also neat and tidy. We were never late with a rent payment and, as I'm a neat-freak by nature, had the place looking schmick. We received fantastic rental references. After a few years, we moved into our own place.
I assumed that the excellent references we had received when we were first starting out would really help us when we were looking to rent again (2000s). But no. Our next move into a rental property came when we bought a block of land and needed somewhere to live while we built a new PPOR. By this time we were a family with young kids, dog, etc. There was hardly anything available. We wanted to live in a 'decent' area but nothing was available even in the 'less desirable' areas! It was Christmas time - traditionally the busiest time of the year for rentals when everyone wants to 'be in by Christmas' and start the new year afresh. We wanted a house and whenever one would come up there was about 20 families inspecting and lodging applications. Most rentals in our area seem to be townhouses, units, etc (cheap stuff that most investors can afford I suppose, but not practical for families...) We had a 6 week settlement before we had to be out of our house and it was tricky to try and make it all work time-wise. We would have been quite happy move out of our house early and pay a few extra weeks rent in advance just to secure a rental, but, silly me made the mistake of being too honest and disclosing that 'we were building' and would probably only need to rent for apppox 12 months and also that we had an (outside) dog. Of course, we were knocked-back due to the successful applicants wanting a long-term lease, not having pets, etc.
If the rental market back then was like it is today (pages of properties available), I don't think we would have had any problem finding something. Obviously landlords can be more choosy when it's a tight rental market and it therefore takes longer for a tenant to find somewhere to live. I know that if I'm ever in that situation again, I won't be revealing that we aren't 'long term' tenants. Interestingly, nor were the successful tenants of a few of the properties we missed out on, as I saw the removalist trucks after a few months
. I'd also time it so as to never be looking for rental accommodation around Christmas/New Year. Although, as a landlord, it's the best time to have an IP available
.
After about 4 weeks (and me getting very panicky) we were eventually offered a rental by a private landlord. The best references we had were to refer him to the immaculately cared-for house we had just sold and to the real estate agent who had sold it for us. As well as the usual pay slips, we also got a letter from our bank stating how we'd never missed a repayment, etc. We moved in, stayed for about 18 months before moving into our new house. No problems at all.
*Just re-read this, geeeez I can waffle *embarrassed*.