> When I moved here I was warned of 100 people turning up to a flat viewing, and laughed it off as some hyperbole. Only later did I find out that it actually ha

> When I moved here I was warned of 100 people turning up to a flat viewing, and laughed it off as some hyperbole. Only later did I find out that it actually happens, albeit the maximum viewing I went to was around a meagre 50. The Bay Area has a rather efficient solution to this problem: limit the open house to 15 minutes. I wish I was kidding, but I saw multiple open houses that were literally 15 minutes long, and if you arrived 16 minutes after it started, too bad. And, unless you show up with a pre-filled application, credit report, blood sample, and your checkbook, there's no guarantee you'll even have a shot at the place. Ok, the blood sample is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Apartment hunting in the Bay Area is not something I'd wish on anyone. I'm pretty sure Dante wrote about it in the Inferno somewhere.