WARNING: rant ahead...

I spent the better part of the day Saturday looking at apts/townhouses. The whole process of finding a place to live here makes me want to kick and scream and yell and throw punches like a little kid having a temper tantrum. :P

So first off all the prices are quoted weekly, but you pay (at least for all the places I looked at) every fortnight (every 2 weeks). To actually find places you end up being pretty much reliant on the internet to discover what's available... no calling up a real-estate agent and getting them to do the job for you (ok that's similar to the US). Then you have to make a million phone calls to actually see all the places you want to see (cuz there are a million different real-estate agents and one can't show you the place that a different guy has listed). Then go look everywhere and hope you find a place you like. So all this isn't really what bothers me though... it's what happens after you find a place you like.

First you have to put in an application. They want all the usual stuff (id, personal info) and then pay slips, bank and credit card statements, 2 business references, 2 personal references, and current and previous addresses and occupations. You also have to have 100 identification points, I think I might have 60... but really how the heck am I suppose to have 100 points when I just moved here. I've never been given a rent receipt, I have no clue what a tenancy history ledger is, I don't have any bills in this country currently, and I don't own a vehicle.

So I did find a place I would like to live... but I haven't gotten past the application yet. There were things it asked for that I didn't know the answer to so I'll be asking about those at work. Hopefully it all works out!!

Rant over... I guess it wasn't really too much of a rant :P