As highlighted in previous post, the rental market here is squeezed so badly that I need an additional post to illustrate it. If you have friends migrated to Australia in the past, you might heard them planning for a week of find-home trip prior to their migration. Gone are the days for this, it's no longer possible to find a home in Sydney in a week. We can find tonnes of rental properties on realestate.com.au & domain.com.au, but believe it or not, there are probably 10 times more tenant looking for the tenancy than the available properties. On average, it will take a local probably 1 month to find a decent rental. However, for new migrant without past rental history, without a job (yet), and without good local references; the chance of securing a tenancy is very slim. It will probably take 2-3 months for new migrant to get a decent tenancy here.
So what are the choices? Basically, there are 3; 1. shared accommodation, 2. unit/apartment, 3. house. The shared accommodation is probably the easiest, just google on the web, find a unit, contact the owner/subtenant, get some informal agreement, and that's it. But do ask for a tenancy record by means of reference or rental receipt, you will need that to find a proper tenancy later. This is the choice if you don't mind privacy and sharing with others.
Secondly, for a decent rental of unit or house, it's good to suggest going through the proper channel. The agent will handle everything (for a fee), and your tenancy and bond are lodged with office of fair trading. You might be surprised how many investor with tonnes of extra cash (from some countries), that want to do it an informal means, but with that, you are risking your tenancy and might end up not getting a fair treatment from the landlord. I guess some of these are renting informally because they are actually declaring themselves as residential, so as to save the capital gain later when they decided to sell the properties.
Anyway, to apply for rental, you will need these records; driving license, rental records/receipts, employment letter/payslip, bank statement, visa/passport, utilities bills, two local references, etc. Make sure you have all these in-place (so you see, it's almost impossible for a new migrant to have all of these). And it's a requirement that you must view the property first before applying. Go ahead with a viewing session and you will understand what I meant above, if you are not fainted yet after viewing.
Comparison between unit/apartment and house:
- Usually, the tenant is not paying for the water bill in unit/apartment, house is different.
- The tenant pay for electrical/gas.
- The tenant never pay the strata, council, and additional fix costs.
- House is hardly maintainable, you have to handle the waste disposal, garden maintanence, etc.
- Look for secured unit and secured car park, this is essential in Sydney in view of the crime rate if you are coming from safe country like Singapore or Japan. House is generally unsecured.
- If you come from tropical country like Singapore/Malaysia, please avoid the brick house (especially old-style), you will be freezing like hell in winter, or wasting tonnes of energy in heating (it's costly).
- You will pay a bond of 4 weeks normally, and it's an offence if the agent/landlord is not submitting your bond to the office of fair-trading. So your hard-earned money is securely placed in a third party, and the landlord will need the proof for repair, etc. if they ever need to use the bond for repair work, after you move out. Make sure you sign a document for the bond to be placed in the fair trading office, with your tenancy.
In the end of the day, you don't have much choice except to pray harder! See the latest news: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/housing-rents-surge-in-sydney/2008/07/23/1216492541148.html
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rent-or-buy-families-hit-a-brick-wall/2008/07/24/1216492641610.html
Post me a comment if you need more information.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
How's life after 5 months in Sydney
All the earlier post in the blog are very positive and forward looking. We are clocking 5 months now in Sydney and both of us securing a stable job in Sydney, and working life is good and not as stressful in Singapore, even as we both working in the probably the more stressful company/industry. But how's life here?
Of course there are good things downunder, especially in Sydney. But we can only use 3 words to summarize. It's "tough, tough, tough". How tough it is, to keep it short, I will just list it in point form.
1. The rental market here is hell, imagine if you have encountered this, 20-30 groups of people viewing a same unit/apartment for 15-30 minutes. Then probably 10 groups of people applying to rent the same unit at or above the asking price. And the application form asking for all and including your most privacy information. Then to wait wait wait with no news by the agent. Sooner or later, you will get used to all the tricks to *entertain* the agent just to get a decent rental unit. Then start the rental hunting again after 6-12 months later. And forget about buying a property, the bank interest will kill you or you end-up in some far away places with stabbing incident every couple of days. And you spend the monies you save from properties into the petrol.
2. It's a fair system, everyone will say that, only to be taken advantage by all the rich people, especially the rich, early investment migrant. It's a fair system? To hell with it. It's never fair and it's so complicated tweaking here and there to make it look fair, but it will never be.
3. The redtape will kill you, regardless in private/public sector. Just try to apply for the residential phone line and you will know. If you encountered a problem, you will be diverted to here and there and never get the problem solved, for months, just wasting all your mobile phone all time to calling again and again.
4. Don't try to get sick here. Isn't that medicare cover your medical? Hell no, it only cover some basics, and if you do get an accident without any private insurance, you better kill yourself than left suffering in the public hospital for days. Go search smh on Royal North Shore Hospital and you will know what I meant.
5. Crime rate is high here, don't try exploring the great western sydney without a brave attitude, read the news more.
6. If you don't ask anything, you don't get nothing or you get the worst thing you can ever imagine. Only after arguing for hell lots of argument, then you will get a barely *fair* treatment, this is call a *fair* system.
7. Racist, don't tell me you don't know Ozzie is a racist country, try walking late night along some youngster area, you will invite some racist remarks from some local half-drunk youngster.
All in all, still hanging on here, that's the fun part of experiencing life. Tell you more mate next time when I am free. :p
Of course there are good things downunder, especially in Sydney. But we can only use 3 words to summarize. It's "tough, tough, tough". How tough it is, to keep it short, I will just list it in point form.
1. The rental market here is hell, imagine if you have encountered this, 20-30 groups of people viewing a same unit/apartment for 15-30 minutes. Then probably 10 groups of people applying to rent the same unit at or above the asking price. And the application form asking for all and including your most privacy information. Then to wait wait wait with no news by the agent. Sooner or later, you will get used to all the tricks to *entertain* the agent just to get a decent rental unit. Then start the rental hunting again after 6-12 months later. And forget about buying a property, the bank interest will kill you or you end-up in some far away places with stabbing incident every couple of days. And you spend the monies you save from properties into the petrol.
2. It's a fair system, everyone will say that, only to be taken advantage by all the rich people, especially the rich, early investment migrant. It's a fair system? To hell with it. It's never fair and it's so complicated tweaking here and there to make it look fair, but it will never be.
3. The redtape will kill you, regardless in private/public sector. Just try to apply for the residential phone line and you will know. If you encountered a problem, you will be diverted to here and there and never get the problem solved, for months, just wasting all your mobile phone all time to calling again and again.
4. Don't try to get sick here. Isn't that medicare cover your medical? Hell no, it only cover some basics, and if you do get an accident without any private insurance, you better kill yourself than left suffering in the public hospital for days. Go search smh on Royal North Shore Hospital and you will know what I meant.
5. Crime rate is high here, don't try exploring the great western sydney without a brave attitude, read the news more.
6. If you don't ask anything, you don't get nothing or you get the worst thing you can ever imagine. Only after arguing for hell lots of argument, then you will get a barely *fair* treatment, this is call a *fair* system.
7. Racist, don't tell me you don't know Ozzie is a racist country, try walking late night along some youngster area, you will invite some racist remarks from some local half-drunk youngster.
All in all, still hanging on here, that's the fun part of experiencing life. Tell you more mate next time when I am free. :p
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