Hello. Our family is having trouble finding a home to rent. We are moving from the US to England, the Cambridge area, this July. We are military. We have two kids and two dogs. We are currently renting out our home in Maryland. Every time we apply for a house it wants a UK phone number which we do not have. And the ones we have emailed about we haven’t received responses. We have three year orders. I would love to finger out how to find a place before we arrive. Advice is welcomed. Thank you.
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You may be better of with traditional agents in the Cambridge area as Openrent doesn’t seem to cater for overseas enquiries.
Sorry but I would be very surprised if you can find a landlord that would agree to a blind rental, 90% of taking on a new tenant is first impressions and you are trying to remove this option from any prospective landlord,
May I suggest book a cheap hotel for a month set up viewings while still in the US and proceed with them immediately you arrive.
15 years in the military. Most of our homes have been sight unseen. I know that can be difficult on both ends. We are always happy to do phone interviews, meetings on zoom and credit reports, even a background check.
I promise we have been reaching out to more then open rent. I understand we will have to be in a hotel for a period of time. What I don’t get is why it has been so hard to hear back from anyone, even trying to set up a booking or viewing for when we are there.
One option instead of a hotel would be an AirBNB - they’re often cheaper than a hotel because there are discounts for long bookings. You’d then have a full “house” so you can live with a bit more freedom than in a hotel.
I’ve seen some landlords still doing video viewings due to COVID, so it should be possible, but it does seem like the market is ‘competitive’ at the moment, perhaps lots of people looking to move at the same time after the extended lockdowns?
I hope you find somewhere.