Letting agent admin fees?

I hadn't thought of that, because at the time I registered I didn't know when we'd get out visas.

But now you do!
Congratulations!!
Was yours post-date as well.   Is it real now, are you preparing/packing mentally etc?
Where to?  Are you still on the bank account issue?  I have yet to report back on that when I resolve something...

Same place as you -- London! Yes, we post-dated ours to 27 Feb 2009. We got Tier 1 Visas this past Saturday. I'm mentally packing and currently throwing out stuff that nobody would want (don't even remember why I wanted it  ). The task looms large now and it's elbows and arseholes all the way to the finish line: shippers, movers, flat rental, selling cars, packing boxes, backing up desktop computers, unsubscribing from email lists (I own my domain and am taking it with me), on and on and on. Exciting and scary all at once.

Exciting and scary - yes
Thankfully we sold big things like cars a while back and now live in a tiny place in NYC.
We got to figure out what to pack/throw or put in temp storage, etc...
We dont think we'll have a permanent place to live until after we get there and look around, so we cannot move/ship everything immediately.   Hmm, books seems pretty heavy to take or ship, so they may have to go elsewhere... along with a lot of other things
Shipping in many cases seems more expensive than re-purchasing stuff over there, but then you have your personal value stuff which you cant buy again...

So you're going sometime in March+?

Yes, March+ sometime. And we won't have a permanent place to live until we get there either. But since it'll take probably 6-8 weeks (maybe more) for our stuff to arrive, we'll try to get the shipment ready asap. We'll still beat the ship over there.

I'm happiest surrounded by my books, so they're mostly all shipped. I don't care if I have to use them for coffee tables and nightstands  !

that's true...  that extra 6-8 weeks would help...
I may have to look into that.  We still have not much to ship...
How do you arrange shipping to the UK without an address   silly question...
do you give a temp address and I assume you can have the local delivery service redirect it to where-ever you live...?

How do you arrange shipping to the UK without an address   silly question...
do you give a temp address and I assume you can have the local delivery service redirect it to where-ever you live...?

"Hold at the Docks, please."

Thanks - It's good to learn...
we still have very few things...
but I may have to look for mover's quotes and see if they beat a 6mo+ storage fee...

Will have to search moving forum for more ideas, thankyou!

I signed up to get emails from Ludlow Thompson. Their prices seem more reasonable than Foxton's (are they, like, the most expensive in London, or what?) But their information on flats is not as extensive, nor are the photos. Still, I'm considering them unless somebody says "whoa, Nelly!"

Sign up with multiple. I think I had emails coming from six agencies when I was looking. We went with Hamptons but that was incidental cause they had the flat we wanted. Look on sites like hotproperty.co.uk or propertyfinder.com and look for specific flats. In this climate, I'll bet anything agencies will negotiate their fees to make a deal. Except Foxtons. Avoid them.

to your last point... are rents are coming down a bit, or at least becoming easier or less competitive to find places...
in NYC a little. Not a lot like in other US places, but the prospective place may last  two days instead of one...

Yes, the rents are coming down a bit, especially in London.

slowly but surely or a bit faster...

I'll have no way of knowing/feeling what a x$/mo flat was 6-12months ago, but hopefully it will be a tad better, more importantly, much easier to actually find and secure...

Except Foxtons. Avoid them.

Couldn't agree more.  Despite the horror stories, we tried to use them, as a corporate agreement meant there would be no fees.  They were a nightmare across the board.  We were looking in several areas and had several agents from different offices.  Almost all of them showed us totally inappropriate places (lovely places for 2x our target rent OR ones that met none of our criteria) or cancelled out at the very last minute. 

Couldn't agree more.  Despite the horror stories, we tried to use them, as a corporate agreement meant there would be no fees.  They were a nightmare across the board.  We were looking in several areas and had several agents from different offices.  Almost all of them showed us totally inappropriate places (lovely places for 2x our target rent OR ones that met none of our criteria)

They did the same thing to us. We were looking for a two-bed in the £1300 range, they showed up four places, 3 at £1700 and 1 at £2000+

When one of the agents called us back a few days later with another offer to see something 25% more expensive than we wanted, I told him to stop wasting my time and hung up on him.

They did the same thing to us. We were looking for a two-bed in the £1300 range, they showed up four places, 3 at £1700 and 1 at £2000+

When one of the agents called us back a few days later with another offer to see something 25% more expensive than we wanted, I told him to stop wasting my time and hung up on him.

Yeah, I have no doubt that "maybe people won't notice the price difference" is their corporate MO.  The bummer is that they have such a nice, easily navigable website with pics, locations and floorplans.  We let our corporate contact know just how disappointed (insanely annoyed!) we were.  Not like they care.