Rental in Sydney.

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.