is the private sector efficient?

ive just rang three letting agencies saying that i wanted to spend roughly 1400 euro a month (slighly more than the average) to rent an apartment pronto, that i was a lecturer in a university and that i could pay immediately and as much in advance as was neccesary. In all three cases, i was put on hold and asked to ring back and then couldnt get in touch with the person and still cant. Either the market is so mad that companies really dont care about business, or there is a principal-agent problem whereby the letting agency doesnt really care about shifting properties quickly or there is just a lot of inefficiency. One could also probably argue that the cost of rapid response outweighs the benefits but surely the cost in this case is more a motivational one than anything else. Levitt caused a bit of a stir over the in the US when he argued that real estate agents tended to shift their own properties quicker for better prices. he gives a great description of this in his Princeton lecture. This brief experience ive just had with an admittedly small sample leaves me wondering how efficient our own property market is, at least the rental side seems daft (pardon the pun).