Giving notice on a flat / searching for a new one...

OK, I've been looking for a new flat (hoping to move mid/end of April).  I have to give 30 days notice to my current landlord.  I have noticed that 95% of the properties advertised (loot, gumtree, rightmove, etc.) are all available immediately - it seems to be the norm that properties are not listed far in advance. When I ask agents for properties that are available in a month's time, they tell me that I'm way too early.  Maybe I am crazy but how does one manage to find a decent flat if they've already given notice to their current landlord?   Is there a trick to get the timing right?  Or do you wind up living in a place you found at the spur of the moment?



P.S. If anybody knows of a nice 1-bedroom flat in Central London available end of April for less than 275pw, please do let me know!

It's luck.  You have to give notice and then look around two weeks before moving date and hope to God something comes up!

Vicky

Well. I stuck with the same agent. We looked at a flat and told them we wanted to move. We gave our 30 day notice, so we don't have to worry about deposits or anything. Because the deposit is the other issue. They don't give it back right away and you have to wait, so you have to save up loads and to me it seems like such a mess.

A good idea if you can is (after you've given notice) to take a day or two off work to flat hunt and see as many places as you can in that time.  That has worked well for me in the past.

P.S. If anybody knows of a nice 1-bedroom flat in Central London available end of April for less than 275pw, please do let me know!

If anyone knows of a decent flat in central London at that price, they'll probably only tell you about it if you bribe them! 

I'm in the same boat, looking to move at the end of the month or so.  Basically, you just have to cross your finger that something will turn up in the time you need it to, because there's no other way around it.  Flats are rarely advertised in advance, and when they are, they're snapped up extremely quickly!

We're going to be in this situation soon and it's scary.  I don't know how confident I am in our ability to find a new house in 30 days that will allow children, a dog and two cats.  We might just have to suck it up and pay rent in two places for a month (but I really don't want to).

We're going to be in this situation soon and it's scary.  I don't know how confident I am in our ability to find a new house in 30 days that will allow children, a dog and two cats.  We might just have to suck it up and pay rent in two places for a month (but I really don't want to).

We've just finished (almost!) moving from a 2br apartment to a 3br semi-detached, 10 miles away.  We gave 60 days notice on the apartment (have to be out by 18 March), found a fantastic house in late January, then found out in early February that it had been taken off the market.  Back to viewings....luckily, we found this place fairly quickly (I think we looked at four other places over two days before viewing this one) and as it was with the same letting company at the previous house (the one that fell through) we were able to fast-track the paperwork and we signed the lease in mid-February.  It meant that we had to pay two rents this past month, which sucked, but given that DF works an odd shift pattern and we had to move in bits and pieces around his work schedule, we needed the extra time - and I felt much more comfortable knowing that we had a few weeks to play with, in case of bad weather or illness or car repairs or whatnot. 

In my experience, UK letting agents don't start showing places until they're available, which makes things really difficult when it comes to house-hunting ahead of time.  It's just another one of those things that makes you go "this works so much better in the US!"

Scary stuff!
I am not sure if I can deal with the stress of finding a new place within a window of 2 weeks....I think I might just have to stick things out and see if I'm lucky enough to find a place more than 30 days in advance or save up some money to prepare for the possibility that I might have to pay two rents at once.  (quelle horreur) I can stay in the place I'm in now as long as I like (not that I'd want to....we have mice, mold, a sewage smell etc.) but it is infinitely better than running the risk of winding up living on the street or at the YMCA!

I wish all of you luck in finding a flat in the nick of time too!

I cant speak for London, but we asked the new landlord to give us time as we had to give notice, we still had to move before the end of our lease in the old place which caused us a lot of grief, but we had crap landlords.

For us the letting agent expected us to have to give notice, and asked us this before letting the landlord know we were interested in the house.

I guess it all depends on  the landlord, and the amount of time its been since the property has been let whether or not asking for enough time to give notice works...good luck!