What’s up with renting houses right now?

I'm going to be proposing to my girlfriend here in the next month and with my lease coming up in early August, decided to go ahead and move to a rental house vs my current apartment. I'm a well-qualified tenant, I've had the same steady job in Houston for 4 yrs, lived in my current home for 2yrs, squeaky clean record with no evictions, criminal history, missed payments on anything, good credit score with no bad credit history, I've got a good cash reserve on hand for covering everything with the house and then some, etc., looking around the $1800/mo range. I have a realtor and am represented. I've jumped on houses the day they were listed, applied within 24hrs, offered 3 week move-in date and I'm losing the houses to other applicants. The last one I lost I offered moving in within 2 weeks. The one before that the guy wouldn't even talk with us even though I applied the same day it was listed. It's almost like if you can't offer to move within a week AND are a perfect tenant don't bother, which is bananas to me, I've never seen it be that competitive.

I'll admit I'm a little picky when it comes to the house, my girlfriend and I are both big in the kitchen, I cook, she bakes, so we want a nice, updated kitchen with good appliances and you'd be amazed how many don't have this seemingly simple thing.

What's going on? Anyone have any tips? I feel like I'm spinning my wheels here, I'm a well-qualified tenant, I have everything anyone would want, I'm negotiating move-in dates down to be competitive, jumping on houses that have what I want as soon as they are listed and still losing out.