Comment: Why securing a rental can be as tricky as finding a place to buy

Compared to buying a house, renting is easy, right?

"Oh, you can just rent for a bit until you find somewhere!" said every well meaning friend and family member ever, as bidding wars were lost and Rightmove searches proved fruitless.

But now the time has come to commit to this option, it turns out it's not as easy as you'd think.

Having reluctantly accepted that we weren't going to find a house to buy anytime soon, we kick-started Project Rent - and immediately encountered a whole other world of problems.

Initially, things seemed so promising. We found two lovely looking houses, and lined up a couple of viewings. So far, so seamless.

Things fell apart pretty quickly, though. The first agent called back to say that the landlord didn't want pets. We always knew this could be an issue. His house was newly renovated and we could see why he wouldn't want cats clawing at the carpet or a dog gnawing at the new doors.

Obviously our impeccably behaved animals wouldn't be guilty of any of these acts, but he didn't know this and we understood why he'd rather steer clear.

It was OK, though - the other house was slightly cheaper. Here was fate telling us that this was the one for us!

Apart from it turned out it was actually the one for someone else; the agent called to say another potential tenant had viewed it and decided to sign up. We hadn't factored this in. It had been on the market for three weeks and wasn't available until September. We thought calling on Monday and booking a viewing for Wednesday would be fine. Turns out not!

I listed my woes to a dog-owning, house-renting friend and she said her path to her current house had also been fraught with 'sorry, no pets' landlords, not to mention OTT letting agents - another area of fun to look forward to.

So now the house sale saga continues with the added rental misery angle. Challenging times indeed.