In really competitive markets it seems like you either get lucky, or you basically know someone in the area who can hook you by word-of-mouth.
In the ancient "before times" there were also actual rental agencies where a human would look for an appropriate apartment for you. I didn't know about them, but a local NorCal person turned me on and it was the only way to find things. They followed all of the different local listings daily and knew the area fairly well (e.g. how parking, transport, different commutes would be). It was $25/mo and ~$100/yr for them to go through the listings call the renter, if necessary. They usually also collected $100 fee, if they hooked you up (though I'm sure you could work around it) with one of their (usually several times a week email of 5-10) available recommendations and usually a $50+ fee for running a "credit check". The reason it seemed to work was that the renters trusted the rental agency to only send them real referrals, and the agency knew all about scammers and fake listings, and daily follow-up. It only worked due to the relatively small area and and high volume. Each agent was looking for ~50-100 people during a month and making several $k/mo themselves, filling them typically in a few months.
Like travel agents used to be an actual thing... but now you either do it yourself on-line, or you're going on some giant family cruise thing.
In the ancient "before times" there were also actual rental agencies where a human would look for an appropriate apartment for you. I didn't know about them, but a local NorCal person turned me on and it was the only way to find things. They followed all of the different local listings daily and knew the area fairly well (e.g. how parking, transport, different commutes would be). It was $25/mo and ~$100/yr for them to go through the listings call the renter, if necessary. They usually also collected $100 fee, if they hooked you up (though I'm sure you could work around it) with one of their (usually several times a week email of 5-10) available recommendations and usually a $50+ fee for running a "credit check". The reason it seemed to work was that the renters trusted the rental agency to only send them real referrals, and the agency knew all about scammers and fake listings, and daily follow-up. It only worked due to the relatively small area and and high volume. Each agent was looking for ~50-100 people during a month and making several $k/mo themselves, filling them typically in a few months.
Like travel agents used to be an actual thing... but now you either do it yourself on-line, or you're going on some giant family cruise thing.