[sounddust]

The problem is that you sent e-mail instead of calling.

I had the same experience in a nearby city, sending 30-40 emails for every 1 response. I finally decided to get a prepaid SIM and start calling people, and suddenly things became much easier.

The person who I eventually rented an apartment from explained that she placed the ad in the morning, went to work, and received my call (and a few others) before she returned home to read her e-mail, which contained over 100 replies. The people who called already had appointments to see the apartment, so she wasn't even going to look at the mails unless those people were uninterested. She also remarked that she could tell from our brief initial conversation that I seemed like a nice person, which helped my chances; she doesn't get that benefit from an email conversation.

Looking at it from a potential landlord's point of view, it makes sense that calling an ad that has just been placed is going to have the highest success rate; not everyone checks their mail as often as tech-minded people.

[cphhell]

Sage advice, I'll probably try it. Still, this may fix my immediate problem but it doesn't do anything for the elephant in the room that, judging from the comments here, was hardly addressed:

she returned home to read her e-mail, which contained over 100 replies.

THIS is the real problem. At the end of the day (or the week) it doesn't matter how one out of the 100 candidates is selected; what matters is that 99 fools will have to keep looking. Finding housing shouldn't be like applying to Google.

[sounddust]

What are you claiming is the "real problem?" I'd argue that the housing market in CPH is no more scarce than any major city, and the only reason it seems so to you is because you were seriously handicapping yourself by not optimizing your approach.

The fact that my landlord's ad received over 100 replies just indicates that there's a pool of "bottom performers" who are repeatedly trying to find housing by responding to ads despite the fact that they're doing some things wrong. Every new ad is going to receive a large number of responses from this same group of hopeless people. If they want to find a place, they're going to have to find out what's wrong with their approach and make some changes, just as I had to do.

[huhtenberg]

This ^ is the only reply that should've been here. Not all the "WTF were you expecting" meta-rants.