The crazy Brisbane rental market

Today we went apartment hunting with our realtor, who is provided by Santos.  This is not like apartment hunting in Calgary (at least neither of us remember it this way), because we had to make appointments at every place we saw and there was another realtor there to let us in.
We went to 6 places in 4 hours.  We saw apartments and condos, we saw magnificent views with perfect privacy and we also patio saw spa tubs that were looked over by 100 other apartments from high density housing, and we saw our target neigbourhoods from entirely new perspectives.  At the end of the day, once we had seen all of our choices and the realtors choices, we came down to two places.  Our initial first choice, based on internet searching, fell to the bottom of the pile as we found out that pictures do not really tell the whole story.  The very first place we looked at, that neither of us thought would be appealing, really captured both our imaginations.  While we were looking at it, the lessor realtor brought in another client, so we knew there was potential for competition.  The more we looked at other places, the more we realized that the first place felt like our place.   After spending more than an hour filling out applications, including multiple copies of ID, we found out that there is another bid!  We have never been through this for an apartment.  Now we have one or two sleepless nights until we hear whether we are successful or not.
Neither one of us has ever been in a rental market like this.  It is has really opened our eyes to what renters in Calgary were going through in 2007 - 2009.  The one thing we can say about the place that we applied for is that the current tenant is one of the most disgusting, piggy renters that either of us have ever seen.  There were clothes everywhere, toys everywhere, dishes everywhere and a general stink throughout.  Luckily, the tenant is responsible for a tip-to-toe steam cleaning.  If the owner makes the smart shoice and accepts us as tenants for the next year, we will definitely be taking better care than the current renter!