I'm currently trying the same approach to get an apartment in the Hague area, Netherlands. I find it very unreliable, but that's probably due to the poor state of house listings here.
The whole experience of searching a suitable house is just aweful, all listing sites are basically full of spam and scams:
- most houses are already taken, but they leave them on the site because free exposure/advertising for the realtor/landlord.
- pictures that are not taken in the actual apartment (they just reuse pictures of a different apartment that kinda looks like it).
- ads that look like normal list items (dark ui).
- super good looking houses for low prices, that turn out to be fake, just to promote the realtor/landlord name.
- loads of hidden costs (service, administration, VAT, parking etc).
- all sorts of requirements (based on sex, income, ethnicity, type of work and what not).
I had similar problems finding a place in Budapest. Craigslist proved particularly unreliable: the usual process was to find a great looking apartment, do a reverse Google search on the image, and find the same place advertised in Paris, Berlin, and numerous other places. And those we did contact were scams: "I'm in Portugal at the moment but I'm happy to travel to Budapest to show you the place if you send me the deposit in advance."
The whole experience of searching a suitable house is just aweful, all listing sites are basically full of spam and scams:
- most houses are already taken, but they leave them on the site because free exposure/advertising for the realtor/landlord.
- pictures that are not taken in the actual apartment (they just reuse pictures of a different apartment that kinda looks like it).
- ads that look like normal list items (dark ui).
- super good looking houses for low prices, that turn out to be fake, just to promote the realtor/landlord name.
- loads of hidden costs (service, administration, VAT, parking etc).
- all sorts of requirements (based on sex, income, ethnicity, type of work and what not).