When is the best period to start looking for a house to rent?

Wizard!

Hi all!

I just relocated to Ireland and working in Galway.
My wife and son will follow at mid November.
When is the best period to start looking for a house to rent?
I was told after September 15th, so university students won't be searching any more.
Is that too soon or too early?
I am currently using Daft.ie & Rent.ie. Would you recommend any other sites?

biko

Post moved out from another thread as I have an inkling there may be followup questions/discussions.

Besides daft and rent you can use http://classifieds.advertiser.ie/property/

Crumbs868

Advantage of looking after uni students take their accommodation would be that you get an idea of who your neighbours are. If you look before u could end up living between noisy students

Wizard!

Mostly I am asking, because when I was searching for a bedroom, I had to spam F5 in daft.ie, and when I saw something of interest, to call or sms asap. I believe this won't be the case when searching for a house, however I am asking since I need to book tickets for my family, and I want to avoid renting a house from October for example, or cannot find something in November and have to rent the only available...

empacher

from what i recall last year there was students staying in hostels till october trying to find places to rent.

Where i was renting never had students, and suddenly did. quiet annoying being woken 3/4 nights a week in September by people coming back at 3am.

I'm actually moving back to galway in a week and the though of trying to find a place is daunting.

If you do drive don't be afraid to look outside the city. Ornamore town for example is on a dual carriageway. 15 mins from the city with light traffic.

But speeding on the time of the day can take much longer but its not a bad commute.

gordongekko

What area are you hoping to rent in?

Stevolende

I heard at one point that the best time to be looking for accommodation in a University town like Galway was in the time after Xmas. It meant that those people who'd moved to town to attend college and found that it wasn't for them and had subsequently dropped out were out of the picture. People were more settled so there was less competition and subsequently no massive queues outside the front of any place you visited.

Not sure how true taht is now since there is apparently more competition for less housing all year long.

I also heard that the best way of getting accommodation was word of mouth and the better places never made it to a point where they needed to be advertised.

Not that any of that is of much use to anybody coming in from outside of town who doesn't already have a communication network to tap into that doesn't automatically mean competition for any place going.

Wizard!

Thanx for the info guys.

gordongekko wrote: »

What area are you hoping to rent in?

Any area. At the beginning I was hoping to find something along a bus route, so it would be easier to go to work, since I do not have a car yet. However, since that will narrow my chances, I will drop it as a prerequisite. Most probably I will get a scooter for starters (I am riding motorcycles the last 25 years), so traffic & distance will not be a problem.

I prefer a house outside the city, that is neat and not expensive, than an apartment in the center, just to be in the center.

What about auctioneers? Can I go to 1-2 of them, let them know my specs and let them do the job?

gordongekko

In general get a place on the same side of town that you're working on. There's a decent bus service in knocknacarra and doughiska.