Our Rental Experience

[wallywombat]

G'day!

My husband and I arrived March 5th and managed to move into a permanent rental May 22nd. I just thought I would write a bit about our experience and take on things which may help others out. In hindsight, the whole process has provided us insight in the Aussie approach and we now fully understand where the saying "Wait a while" comes from!

We knew before arriving that the market was competitive but moving from Vancouver, Canada, extortionate rental rates and poor accommodation standards weren't anything new. However, having lived in the UK, Canada and now Australia, I think it's almost impossible to compare the different markets.

 

GENERAL MARKET EXPERIENCE

The Perth rental market is what it is. The most shocking element for us was the standard of service received from many of the agents and the efficiency (lack of) of the rental process; once we realised and accepted that these were not going to change, our rental search and the whole process became much more easier to work with. We laugh now, but when we first started to look at houses, we were so unimpressed by some of the agents, we just walked away thinking we don't want to rent from an agent with a careless attitude. Ha! If we continued to do that, we would still be looking now.

 

Of course not all agents have the attitude, but too many of them do - and it was our experience that that aspect of the house search could become quite demoralising if you let it. In the end, we would turn it around and look at the positives after a viewing and think "oh, at least that agent didn't drive over the flower bed after they were 10 minutes late to the viewing" (true story).

 

COUPLE HOUSE SEARCH ($380-430/week) (NO KIDS TO CONSIDER)

As we have no kids to consider, I think our house search experience would be very different to those who have to consider schools and surroundings. I think our main challenge was finding something we could happily live in within our price range. We are fussy buggers and as my husband works from home, quiet street is a must (little traffic) and we wanted an Aussie garden preferably with a palm tree or two, eucalyptus tree and a couple of citrus trees! We also decided rather early on that we wanted to live NOR as we instantly fell in love with the beaches up here.

In this price range, the first houses we found to look at were in Craigie, Heathridge, a couple in Joondalup, Connolly and Currambine. Most of the houses in Craigie and Heathridge offered the gardens, however, the houses were older (which normally isn't a problem), a lot of them seriously hadn't been renovated since they were built. Some of them were just shocking. Some of them just should not have been shown in those states. Just shocking. Personally, I found it quite depressing to see how other people lived and after one viewing just burst into tears in the car one day. We looked at one place that desperately needed a pain job and had a whole pucnched in one door and basically things were hanging off everywhere and floor boards sticking up. Give me a break!

After that, we started considering looking further afield and looked at newer builds in Balcatta and NOllamara. We actually found some houses in decent states and I think if you can tell by looking at the neighbours gardens what kind of area it is. But the ocean was still calling us and we didn't see as much bush as we liked around those areas.

One day, we even went out to Kelmscott. Again the house was a newer build, but the street it was on could tell a story or two. We hung around outside for a bit and sure enough a couple worse for wear walked passed with a Coles trolley pushing a kid. 5 doors down saw the bins were burnt out.....yeah....we were trying hard to want to like the house, but decided against it.

IN the end, we decided to start looking at new builds (as oddly enough many of them are cheaper) but wasn't keen at all about the lack of garden and the houses built right next door to eachother. Since we have been living in apartments for quite a long time, we decided to think of these houses as apartments - just spread out horizontally rather than vertically. That worked for us and we could then start imagining living in the houses.

3x2's

The beauty of theses 3x2's is that many of them are pretty small which meant that they didn't appeal to many families so we found there were only 10 or so attendees to the open house rather than the 20-30 that usually attended the houses with gardens. OUr now agent even said that some landlords prefer a professional couple in 3x2 rather than a family. We ended up winning a 3x2 in Pearsall and glad now we did. we are 10km away from the beach but the house doesn't need anything doing to it and we have just moved straight in without having to paint or put doors back on their hinges. We are finding it hard though trying to bring some life into the decor without being able to hang what we want up and where we want it.

Application Package

Be prepared to give all of your personal details to the agent and just hope for the best - We have little faith that our personal details are filed under lock and key and just waiting for the day when we will be vicitms of identity theft.

 

We ended up creating an index/cover sheet and referenced all of our copies of identification etc. This made it much easier when filling out the application. ON our cover sheet we included the following:

Names and identification #'s

Current landord and contact details

Vehicle make, model and license plate no.

Personal references - contact details

Landlord reference - contact details

We only had emails from people which we printed off as references (landlord, personal) and we each had an employment reference from our employers in Canada stating our position there and how long we worked there for.

 

Neither of us had work and we just gave a copy of our bank statement. If you are relying on your savings too, I would recommend getting a statement print off right after landing and include that one in all of your applicaitons. Ours was 2 months old that we used in our application - and noone questioned it. So print before you buy a car!!!

 

We DID NOT offer more weekly rent!

 

In the end, we applied for 4 houses and won 3 out of the 4. (and the one we didn't get must have had a story to it, as they didn't even call our WA reference).

 

Warning: you may feel the need to offer vital organs in return for a lease - but refrain from doing so. If you are meant to get it, you will!! If not, move on to the next one.

Lease Signing

When getting you to sign the lease, don't take offence when they treat you like you live like a heathan pig and assume that you will wreck the house. (even after they have checked your references). Just say "yih" or "nah" and you'll be right.

 

Living the Lease

We are only 2 weeks into our lease so will have to update this at a later date. Would appreciate it if anyone can give us some ideas for filling up these bare walls!

 

Hope this helps someone. Just thought I would give our take on things as we are a couple on a relatively low rental range.

[lozzachino]

Thanks so much for this! Really interesting as we are in the midst of a search!!

[Jen_PFR]

It's always good to hear people's success stories. Glad to hear you found somewhere so quickly, and for a reasonable price

[Guest Rachael Lemon]

Very enlightening! Thank you for sharing! We'll be over to Perth in about 5 weeks and have a property set up by the company for the first month but while we're there we have to find somewhere for ourselves and 4 daughters!!! I thought this side of things has become extremely taxing... oh the joy, at least we have a little bit of an idea of what awaits us

[coastie]

Thanks for a great post. I really enjoyed reading it all.

 

Coastie.

[Scot01]

Really interesting. Good idea to look at the other others and hang around for a while. I had work up in Alkimos recently and it struck me how scruffy some of the streets were - the front lawns were over grown, rubbish around and it is because many of the houses are rented out. If you have just arrived then a lawn mower is not going to be high on the list of things to buy and you might not need one if you move! The council also hadn't mowed their bits so it just had a general air of scruffiness that would be off putting. Not really a reflection of the people who live in the houses but can give the wrong impression.

[AndyandJo]

Great post, it has given me some food for thought, just got a bank cheque for a car so wish I'd read this first:wacko: balance looks less fruity now!!

[kerry267]

Great post, it gives us an idea of what to expect. I can't wait to get over there (6 weeks to go) but the house hunting is a little daunting. Only because there is so much competition! I guess you just have to go with the flow!

[The Hobson Crew]

Thank you so much for posting this! We are due to fly out to Perth in 2 weeks and one of our main concerns is the rental market. Some great info here which helps a lot

[Stevie G]

We have 3 pets and when going through an estate agent each time we were rejected, even though we both work. Eventually we had to go through a private owner.

A lot of the properties were also hovels(not fit for a pig) and not cheap. It took us about 2 mouths in the end to get a place at a reasonable price, but not in a particularly good area at 380 per week(only 2 bed rooms).

My wife is now living there while I try to get a job in Perth to join her, which is not proving to be too easy as there are too many people chasing too few jobs, but I will eventually get there:smile:.

[Goat]

Really interesting. Good idea to look at the other others and hang around for a while. I had work up in Alkimos recently and it struck me how scruffy some of the streets were - the front lawns were over grown, rubbish around and it is because many of the houses are rented out. If you have just arrived then a lawn mower is not going to be high on the list of things to buy and you might not need one if you move! The council also hadn't mowed their bits so it just had a general air of scruffiness that would be off putting. Not really a reflection of the people who live in the houses but can give the wrong impression.

 

Bull**** , shore haven is pristine , they're trying to sell houses , trinity is the same , I walk the dog round there regularly , as for council the corner blocks are the owners priority case if talking ballocks again

[Guest AlexMiethke]

This was fun to read! Haha thanks for sharing this! Will keep these things in mind.

[basicweb]

Thanks for the post, that shows a realistic view of the Perth long term rental market - I would really love to share this with our clients at Ozouserental.com - some people really do have an unrealistic view. thanks for the insight, and please let me now if it is Ok to share.

 

Tracey Ozhouserental

 

at;63128]G'day!

My husband and I arrived March 5th and managed to move into a permanent rental May 22nd. I just thought I would write a bit about our experience and take on things which may help others out. In hindsight, the whole process has provided us insight in the Aussie approach and we now fully understand where the saying "Wait a while" comes from!

We knew before arriving that the market was competitive but moving from Vancouver, Canada, extortionate rental rates and poor accommodation standards weren't anything new. However, having lived in the UK, Canada and now Australia, I think it's almost impossible to compare the different markets.

 

GENERAL MARKET EXPERIENCE

The Perth rental market is what it is. The most shocking element for us was the standard of service received from many of the agents and the efficiency (lack of) of the rental process; once we realised and accepted that these were not going to change, our rental search and the whole process became much more easier to work with. We laugh now, but when we first started to look at houses, we were so unimpressed by some of the agents, we just walked away thinking we don't want to rent from an agent with a careless attitude. Ha! If we continued to do that, we would still be looking now.

 

Of course not all agents have the attitude, but too many of them do - and it was our experience that that aspect of the house search could become quite demoralising if you let it. In the end, we would turn it around and look at the positives after a viewing and think "oh, at least that agent didn't drive over the flower bed after they were 10 minutes late to the viewing" (true story).

 

COUPLE HOUSE SEARCH ($380-430/week) (NO KIDS TO CONSIDER)

As we have no kids to consider, I think our house search experience would be very different to those who have to consider schools and surroundings. I think our main challenge was finding something we could happily live in within our price range. We are fussy buggers and as my husband works from home, quiet street is a must (little traffic) and we wanted an Aussie garden preferably with a palm tree or two, eucalyptus tree and a couple of citrus trees! We also decided rather early on that we wanted to live NOR as we instantly fell in love with the beaches up here.

In this price range, the first houses we found to look at were in Craigie, Heathridge, a couple in Joondalup, Connolly and Currambine. Most of the houses in Craigie and Heathridge offered the gardens, however, the houses were older (which normally isn't a problem), a lot of them seriously hadn't been renovated since they were built. Some of them were just shocking. Some of them just should not have been shown in those states. Just shocking. Personally, I found it quite depressing to see how other people lived and after one viewing just burst into tears in the car one day. We looked at one place that desperately needed a pain job and had a whole pucnched in one door and basically things were hanging off everywhere and floor boards sticking up. Give me a break!

After that, we started considering looking further afield and looked at newer builds in Balcatta and NOllamara. We actually found some houses in decent states and I think if you can tell by looking at the neighbours gardens what kind of area it is. But the ocean was still calling us and we didn't see as much bush as we liked around those areas.

One day, we even went out to Kelmscott. Again the house was a newer build, but the street it was on could tell a story or two. We hung around outside for a bit and sure enough a couple worse for wear walked passed with a Coles trolley pushing a kid. 5 doors down saw the bins were burnt out.....yeah....we were trying hard to want to like the house, but decided against it.

IN the end, we decided to start looking at new builds (as oddly enough many of them are cheaper) but wasn't keen at all about the lack of garden and the houses built right next door to eachother. Since we have been living in apartments for quite a long time, we decided to think of these houses as apartments - just spread out horizontally rather than vertically. That worked for us and we could then start imagining living in the houses.

3x2's

The beauty of theses 3x2's is that many of them are pretty small which meant that they didn't appeal to many families so we found there were only 10 or so attendees to the open house rather than the 20-30 that usually attended the houses with gardens. OUr now agent even said that some landlords prefer a professional couple in 3x2 rather than a family. We ended up winning a 3x2 in Pearsall and glad now we did. we are 10km away from the beach but the house doesn't need anything doing to it and we have just moved straight in without having to paint or put doors back on their hinges. We are finding it hard though trying to bring some life into the decor without being able to hang what we want up and where we want it.

Application Package

Be prepared to give all of your personal details to the agent and just hope for the best - We have little faith that our personal details are filed under lock and key and just waiting for the day when we will be vicitms of identity theft.

 

We ended up creating an index/cover sheet and referenced all of our copies of identification etc. This made it much easier when filling out the application. ON our cover sheet we included the following:

Names and identification #'s

Current landord and contact details

Vehicle make, model and license plate no.

Personal references - contact details

Landlord reference - contact details

We only had emails from people which we printed off as references (landlord, personal) and we each had an employment reference from our employers in Canada stating our position there and how long we worked there for.

 

Neither of us had work and we just gave a copy of our bank statement. If you are relying on your savings too, I would recommend getting a statement print off right after landing and include that one in all of your applicaitons. Ours was 2 months old that we used in our application - and noone questioned it. So print before you buy a car!!!

 

We DID NOT offer more weekly rent!

 

In the end, we applied for 4 houses and won 3 out of the 4. (and the one we didn't get must have had a story to it, as they didn't even call our WA reference).

 

Warning: you may feel the need to offer vital organs in return for a lease - but refrain from doing so. If you are meant to get it, you will!! If not, move on to the next one.

Lease Signing

When getting you to sign the lease, don't take offence when they treat you like you live like a heathan pig and assume that you will wreck the house. (even after they have checked your references). Just say "yih" or "nah" and you'll be right.

 

Living the Lease

We are only 2 weeks into our lease so will have to update this at a later date. Would appreciate it if anyone can give us some ideas for filling up these bare walls!

 

Hope this helps someone. Just thought I would give our take on things as we are a couple on a relatively low rental range.

[Candygirl]

Thanks for sharing WallyWombat, good advice and gives people realistic expectations of what to expect. Your comment about seeing the positives when the agent arrived 10 minutes and your positive was that he did not drive on the flowerbeds really made me chuckle.