ok, completely OT rant but hey…..
So 3 weeks ago, my wife and I put in application forms for renting a new apartment. The letting agent use Homelet to do referencing etc. and therefore our applications were sent to them for processing. At the point of application, we knew that they were unlikely to be happy with only 18 months of accounts for myself (they ask for 3 years) and the fact that my wife has only been working full time for the last 4 months(previously a student). In order to assist with this we provided a guarantor (SP?) at the point at which we applied as we presumed they'd want it.
They started by phoning our current landlady and telling her we were moving and asking for a reference which forced our hand into giving notice on our current apartment. I get that this reference is important but given that they hadn't done any of the other checks, it was annoying that they did this first.
after determining that our credit etc was fine etc, I was told that all they were waiting on was the reference from my wife's work. we duly arranged for her manager to call them as they had apparently left several messages but no response. I then left it 48 hours to allow for whatever box ticking was needed and phoned to check if we were good to go. I was then told that they needed to do all of the checks on the guarantor still as they hadn't started that.
This was 3 days ago and they are estimating that it will still take another 3-4 business days to complete and then we have to arrange with the letting agent to go and do the inventory before we can get keys.
AAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH
so at the moment, it looks like we will be homeless for a couple of days minimum and I will have to pay extra for van hire/storage for all our stuff.
Have I just been hideously naive about how long these things take or am I right to be a bit Pi**ed at it taking a month to arrange to rent an apartment?
Anyone know about these things more than I do?
