Renting in London - Searching woes....

familyguy12

Myself and my OH are currently looking for a one bed apartment/flat/house in the West / North West London area. We expect to be making the move next month.

So far we've been browsing on rightmove and zoopla.

One thing which I find infuriating when searching is the fact that on these major property sites you cannot deselect house sharing or rule it our of your search. Approx half the results will be house sharing or studios which are unsuitable.

Zoopla has at least got a keyword search so if I put in 'included' for example it will usually bring up a lot of places where the bills are included in the rental price.

Rightmove don't even have a keyword search.

It's frustrating have to go through listings which are house shares.

Gumtree I find is the worst of all, all it seems to bring up is single rooms and studios advertised for students.

I just wish it was more straight forward to be able to search for the exact type of rental property you want to find, especially in this day and age.

If anyone has any tips or alternatives to these sites I'm all ears.

Thanks.

Guest101

familyguy12 wrote: »

Myself and my OH are currently looking for a one bed apartment/flat/house in the West / North West London area. We expect to be making the move next month.

So far we've been browsing on rightmove and zoopla.

One thing which I find infuriating when searching is the fact that on these major property sites you cannot deselect house sharing or rule it our of your search. Approx half the results will be house sharing or studios which are unsuitable.

Zoopla has at least got a keyword search so if I put in 'included' for example it will usually bring up a lot of places where the bills are included in the rental price.

Rightmove don't even have a keyword search.

It's frustrating have to go through listings which are house shares.

Gumtree I find is the worst of all, all it seems to bring up is single rooms and studios advertised for students.

I just wish it was more straight forward to be able to search for the exact type of rental property you want to find, especially in this day and age.

If anyone has any tips or alternatives to these sites I'm all ears.

Thanks.

Google, letting agents in your desired area
Pick up the phone and dial the number
say do you have any 1 bedroom houses/flats/etc in your area which are no more than £x per month

princeofpounds

So far we've been browsing on rightmove and zoopla.

Having rented many times in and around London...

Do not bother searching online for young professionals accommodation.

You need to get out and speak to the agents. Almost all the better properties never even hit the website, and half the stuff that does is fake 'kite flying' to get you on the agent's calling list.

When a property comes in, the specs go up on a whiteboard in the office. The agents each call a handful of people on their list who can view in the next day or two. Normally they get an offer, and they move on.

jbmadd

On Rightmove, you can select "Minimum beds" as 1 - this should filter out the studios.

Then, once you click search, there is a filter for "type of let", which usually says "Long term", "Short term" or "House/Flat share" so you should be able to filter out the house shares at that point.

Summer-Sunshine_2

Hav u tried Prime location? Other then that I would suggest u go down to the town near where u would like to rent and go into the agents and ask them? :beer:

familyguy12

Summer-Sunshine wrote: »

Hav u tried Prime location? Other then that I would suggest u go down to the town near where u would like to rent and go into the agents and ask them? :beer:

I'm browsing it now.

We will be moving in mid September so our hunt is on now.

benjus

princeofpounds wrote: »

Do not bother searching online for young professionals accommodation.

This is good advice if you want to rent via a letting agent.

Personally though I'd much rather rent direct from the landlord as IME it has been cheaper and less hassle than having agents involved. I found 2 great flats on Gumtree in 2010 and 2013. I just kept searching repeatedly to see new ads coming on, then called quickly when one appeared to get an early viewing in.

It's harder to find a place this way, but I think it's better if you can pull it off. Best thing to do is to try both approaches simultaneously and see which pays dividends first.

Petal88

Have you gotten in touch with Foxtons? I know they're evil and they but they are also the largest estate agents in the UK so I'm sure they'd have something for you!

princeofpounds

so I'm sure they'd have something for you!

Yeah, a big fat 'admin charge' bill...

This is good advice if you want to rent via a letting agent.

Personally though I'd much rather rent direct from the landlord

Yeah if you are willing to filter out the gumtree conmen then it can make sense... but I purposefully avoided getting into that topic!

familyguy12

benjus wrote: »

This is good advice if you want to rent via a letting agent.

Personally though I'd much rather rent direct from the landlord as IME it has been cheaper and less hassle than having agents involved. I found 2 great flats on Gumtree in 2010 and 2013. I just kept searching repeatedly to see new ads coming on, then called quickly when one appeared to get an early viewing in.

It's harder to find a place this way, but I think it's better if you can pull it off. Best thing to do is to try both approaches simultaneously and see which pays dividends first.

Thanks for replying. I just find Gumtree really frustrating because of how limited the search function is.

All I can seem to find is room or flatshares and overpriced studios, none of which interest us.

I will give it another go though, some of the agency fees I've seen quoted are exorbitant!

Voyager2002

Don't forget local papers...

I have recently been looking for somewhere in Aberdeen. Places that I found on-line (particularly through agents) were always being chased by multiple would-be tenants: three times I found a suitable place at a rent that I was willing to afford, filled in application forms and provided lots of documentation, and then the property went to someone else. However, I viewed two properties from the local paper and on both occasions the owner made it clear that I could rent the property if I so wished.