I think the reporting is misleading: 'How would you feel if, desperate for somewhere to live, you had to bid against other prospective renters?' That's just t

I think the reporting is misleading: 'How would you feel if, desperate for somewhere to live, you had to bid against other prospective renters?' That's just the market. All this does is make it more transparent. What is needed is strong legal protections as part of the bidding process, so that neither landlord nor renter can be unexpectedly left in the lurch at the last minute, and a digital approach could plausibly help here. I live in London. A friend of mine recently was told two days before moving into a rental flat that the landlord had had accepted a better offer. A deposit had been taken by the estate agent, and they were meant to have handled getting the landlord to sign a contract, but it turned out they hadn't. In the end it was all resolved, with the friend having to up their bid, but it was by no means guaranteed. For him, the ability to bid at the last minute on a flat could have been valuable, and so would contractually binding documents that could have resulted from the successful conclusion of an auction.