0 Letting A House

I am a hyper-researcher of everything, so I have been looking up houses to "let" (rent) ever since we knew England was a possibility. 

 I've been obsessing over it since we found out it is a definite. 

 I have found a couple of houses I like; some are too far away from Paul's work, some have already rented since then, but there are still a few on the market.

 Our parameters are kind of screwy, I guess.

We want:

a house (not a flat or townhome)

a fenced/hedged in garden (yard)

off street parking, preferably a garage (rust on my baby Watson!!)

at least 3 bedrooms-

here's where it gets interesting.

We want at least 2 bedrooms on the ground floor. This is so that our bedroom and my art room can be accessible to Max without him having to do stairs. Ideally, we would have a 4-5 bedroom house (sounds huge to Americans, but these rooms are much smaller and if we live in one of the smaller towns around the area it's quite feasible) and three bedrooms would be on the ground floor (our bedroom, my art room, the computer room) with two upstairs on the first floor (yes, you read that correctly, what we in America call the second floor is called the first floor in England, our first floor is their ground floor). These would both be guest rooms. The pets would not be allowed up the stairs to the guest rooms so that our allergic relatives would at least have a chance when they come visit us.

and I'd like two bathrooms, at least 1 1/2. Bathrooms seem quite overrated there...

My current worry is that the letting process seems quite involved and tedious there, and we'll be dealing with finding a pet friendly location, not to mention paying to stay in a pet friendly lodging, so there's a little pressure... Paul doesn't want to inquire on properties prior to us being there to see them, I still might email a couple of the more promising letting agencies in early Oct to let them know what we are looking for.

Long story short, hopefully we'll find a house that not only suites our needs but is an open and welcome bed and breakfast for all our friends to come stay!