how quickly will one be able to find a house to rent (Reston: apartments)

[dreamspindle]

Hello guys,
I am new here. I am currently living in Germany, but we will be moving to the DC area soon (though we still don't have a definite date, which is kind of annoying, sigh) Since we cannot make any definite decisions before we have the contract and such like (it is settles just some bockgroundcheck needs to be completed first) I have been browsing various house-website. We want to rent a house (hubby, me and two kids 3 and 8) so I was wondering, what is the normal time it takes in the US to wrap such things up? I mean how long does it *Usually* take. What is the time span people will plan in for house hunting (for rent not buy) and actually moving in? I mean it is bound to vary in individual cases, but here I would plan it about a month to find something and maybe another month to moving in (but that would be apartments, too....sigh) Any suggestion to easy an overly excited and way too concerned mother's worries? Thanx

[JfromReston]

It should take much less time here. If you are really working hard at looking and following up with the required paper work it shouldn't take more than a week or two for the hunting and moving in process. Be sure you have a letter ready to give to the renting agent stating your husbands salary.

[dreamspindle]

Thank you that is a very useful hint

[athousandlogins]

JfromReston is right, it hardly takes much time at all.

In fact, we moved to a rental house earlier this year, and had trouble because we were looking too EARLY for most landlords!

We had to be out of our apartment by July 1, and normally we would have been expected to house hunt no earlier than mid-May. But since my baby was due in mid-May, we did the hunt in April. We did find a place but most of the stuff on the market was available immediately and the lanlords didn't generally want to wait until July 1 to start a lease.

The point is, you can do fine even if you have only a couple weeks notice. And in fact the selection might be better that way. We found that a lot of good "available July 1" properties didn't even go on the market until late May/early June.