This is a really long rant so TL;DR. The amount of people I see posting on DAFT that seem genuinely, well, daft is beyond me. Also wasn't sure whether to flair this as Housing or Moaning Michael so I put housing as its actually relevant to that I suppose.

I [22M] have been looking for a place in the south/southwest for almost a month now. I'm not really too fussy about where, as I have my own transport and my work is quite transient anyway (I'm a fairly specialised contractor so often pick up a few jobs in one area and end up moving around for 6 months or a year.)

It's really strange the amount of people posting where they include their phone number and the first line of the description is "EMAIL ONLY, DO NOT CALL US" or something like that. Am I missing something or don't they have the option to only put their email? Same applies to letting agencies putting a phone number that they just don't answer. I thought the capital letters might be a boomer leftover thing from Typewritten ads or something but the more I look the more I'm convinced its an expression of anger, they all seem to answer the phone by barking rather than talking.

Another thing I've noticed, I generally tend to look for one person rentals for a variety of reasons, mostly I want to see my partner who also works transiently and I want my own space.

Something I've come across is how DAFT has [Rent/Share/Buy] categories listed and the landlords/agents posting the properties have no clue how to use those, I want my own space but every time I go on there, there are properties advertised for rent that look like massive bargains I.e 3 bedroom house for 500 quid or thereabouts, you go into the page it's actually a ripoff where they want that price for each room in the backarse of buttfuck nowhere.

Sometimes they even vary the prices for each room which enrages me more because THERES AN OPTION FOR THAT IF YOU CHOOSE SHARE where you can list the property as "€400-725" for example.

On one of my successful viewings an agent asked me for proof of my employment. I was actually a bit annoyed at this given I was wearing dirtied work clothes, a lanyard for the company I was at, I arrived in my work vehicle to a viewing I had to reschedule because of work and offered her over 1.5k cash in deposit and first month to secure the property. She then asked if I could at least provide a contact at work along with a huge list of personal questions. To what end? Seems purposeless and like a GDPR minefield to me.

I didn't want her to call a client of mine and for them to get the wrong idea, maybe I'd be moving further away from that client, will they think I'll be less dedicated to them? Maybe they might just think that because I'm looking for a place that I'm homeless, I suppose I could prove my employment status and only that but just proving that I'm self employed wouldn't work because it wouldn't prove I'm actually making any money which is obviously what she wants to know, and anything that would, such as invoices would probably be too revealing about a client. Eventually I just chose to skip out on all of this. They ask it because someone will answer it but as a matter of principle I just couldn't. It's not like I couldn't afford the €800 rent on the dole with HAP so it shouldn't even be of their concern whether I'm employed.

In all honesty this has become so frustrating, and my current letting ends in a week as it was seasonal to begin with. If it wasn't for mammys house, I probably would be homeless in a week or two.