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Hi, I hope you don't mind an Aussie posting in this forum, but I have a house I have rented for the last 13yrs to 7 successive South African Families (including 2 brothers). The house is in Hallett Cove SA, where you'll find lots of other South Africans and a lifestyle everyone seems to enjoy. So details about the house: 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1 toilet. 2 bedrooms with built in cupboards. Space for parking 2 cars off street. It is on a sloping block facing the sea, and has sea "glimpses". It has efficient heating & cooling. I have the electricity and gas accounts in my name, which makes it easier for new arrivals who don't know which company to go with. It is within 200m of a primary to year 12 school. It is within 300m of a train station to the city. It is withing 500m of medium sized shopping centre. The house is mine, and I will handle everything, no agents. I keep the rent below the market rate, and try to keep it the same until you move out, ie, current tenants have had a fixed rent for 2.5yrs. The address is 12 Manunda Way Hallett Cove, South Australia. The reason I prefer (strongly) to rent to South Africans are: Most of you have owned houses before and know how/why to look after a house. You have all been grateful for me letting you rent the house. I do not care if you don't have a rental history I can check, I understand. I do not care if you don't have a job, I've seen everyone get jobs really quick, I understand. I understand that your furniture is coming soon in a container, so I lend everyone some camping chairs, cooking gear, and a 12V car fridge to get you by. I don't mind if you're family comes to visit, I had up to 11 people in the house at once!! Everyone has paid the rent and looked after the house, that's all I ask. And it's great for me to see families arrive, with a tenseness in their face and manner, and gradually, over about 3 months, relax, then 12 months later be absolutely settled. The house is available from 28 April 2016, hopefully I find someone soon, otherwise I'll have to rent to Aussie's!! I can provide contact details of previous tenants if you would like to check that I am for real (this is the exact opposite of what happens normally). If you would like to call me: 0437 383 998 I will some photos of the house this weekend, when I take some fresh ones, as I've recently done alot of work in the backyard, including an outdoor fireplace. Regards, Paul Whittenbury e: paul.whittenbury@bigpond.com.au

Hi everyone, My family and I are arriving in Melbourne next month and we are taking our English Cocker Spaniel with us. I have been looking at rental properties on realestate.com.au and there are many properties that match my criteria however when I click on the 'pets allowed' box almost all of the properties disappear. Does anyone have any advice on this matter? If the website says that a property is not pet friendly is that set in stone or are the landlords generally flexible? Where we stay is very important as my daughter will be starting school next year so we need to be in the catchment area of a school that we like.

Hello everyone! We (2 Adults and 2 kids) are making our way to Canberra in about 4 months time , and we have a few questions about the Canberra city / surrounding area : Schools: Where are the good primary schools? Suburbs : Where are good family suburbs that have rentals of $400 - $500 pw ? Any suggestions / insight of the general area will be much appreciated! thanks

Hi, A short introduction to myself and why I am here. I use to be a member of saaustralia.org many moons ago, (Frenchy - unable to reset password as e-mail does not exist anymore). We came to Perth in 2008 and this forum was instrumental in enabling me to do all our Visas (a 457 and Pr136) myself, organise a container, make the move and settle in. I will be eternally grateful for the help we received here. After about 4 years I felt that I had moved on from the forum and left. Australia has been very good to us. We love it here. To be honest I don't miss RSA, I miss my family. We are taking a early retirement/gap year and for a year or maybe more and we are planning to Caravan around Australia. We own a lovely house in Lesmurdie/Kalamunda in the Perth hills and would like to rent it out, unfurnished, or furnished if you are coming over with only your suitcases. We are pricing it below market rate as long as your references check out and you will look after the place. We do love our house and intend to move back. It would suit somebody trying to find their feet and that might work somewhere close to the Airport/Southern suburbs. Our community is amazing and the schools are all very good. Just beware....you might fall in love with our community and decide to stay on. If you think you might be interested our house, please contact me via a message. I am trying to post in classifieds, but my rookie status is preventing me. Any questions welcome. Kind Regards PerthGirl

Hi We have a lovely family home for rent in Carramar. Quiet area close to all amenities and opposite lovely bushland. Available 1 July 2016 http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-wa-carramar-418555590

We are relocating to Perth from 1st January 2016 and I am looking for a rental for 6 months in Mullaloo Perth or surrounding areas close to St Marks Anglican Community School. 4 Bedroom 2 Bathroom 2 lockup garages Air cooling Rental $500 to $550 Does anyone know of someone that has a property like this or recommend an agent that can help. I'm in Perth 21st to 25th September and would like to meet to discuss with someone that can help.

Hi All! My boyfriend and I are moving to Sydney near the end of March. We will be shipping our dog over in May. I was just wondering if anyone could help with areas to look for in Sydney where there are more rentals likely to have a garden/courtyard? Our dog is small but we would prefer not to be on a higher level apartment where he has nowhere to go outside during the day. We were looking at the Eastern suburbs, but I have mostly seen high rise apartments in those areas, so is there anywhere specific we should be looking (Northern beaches? North Sydney? anywhere else?) Any advice would be appreciated!!

10/106 Brown Street, Heidelberg For rent - $430 per week Nestled in the corner of a pristine block, offering peace and tranquility. Cathedral ceiling enhances the already light filled large lounge and dining areas, modern kitchen with gas/electric cooking and dishwasher, two bedrooms - one with walk-in robe and the second with built-in robes, renovated bathroom and separate laundry. Other features include ducted heating, evaporative cooling. single garage plus one car space and a private, delightful courtyard and private back yard. Short walk to Heidelberg shops, train station, schools as well as Austin / Mercy Hospital complex. PROPERTY OPEN for inspection Saturday 15th AUGUST - time to be advised Contact Miles Real Estate on (03) 9497 3222 if you would like to set up a time to inspect http://www.realestate.com.au/property-unit-vic-heidelberg-416327449

Arriving in Sydney in 23 days and everything's feeling REALLY real. Still feel like I have 38477636221 things to do here first, which is stressful and overwhelming, but just trying to take it one day at a time. Two things in particular that are stressing me out, which I can't really do much about now: 1. Getting a rental 2. Getting my son (6) into a good public school Anyone have any words of advice for me on either of these two things? Thanks and SEE YOU SOON, SYDNEY!!!

Hello Our family of 4 are relocating from lovely Sydney to Airlie Beach in Queensland due to my partners job . Was wondering if anyone could suggest moving companies which they had a good experience with ? Any suggestions other than Gumtree for where I could advertise our rental as we now need to find someone to either take over lease or take the knock of losing our deposit. Thanks

Hi. As I am new to the Sydney rental market, please can someone enlighten me as to whether I am allowed to knock paintings, pictures, mirrors etc. into the walls. In South Africa, this was fine as long as you 'puttied' up the hole when moving out. I believe that in Sydney you are not allowed to knock any nails into the wall, which means that you will have bare walls for as long as you are renting??

Hi everybody I have not been very active on the forum, but our migration process is quite far advanced. We got our 189 visas in May 2013, did the validation trip in September, and I am very actively looking for job in either Melbourne or Sydney. During the LSD I enjoyed Melbourne more, but obviously I must go where I can find a job. We decided that I will go over first to secure employment (I am in IT)?, and that my husband will follow later. I am battling with a few decisions and I am hoping that you can post your thoughts on these: My daugther is starting grade 10 next year, and I would like her to start school at the beginning of the school year. However, it might be a risk to bring her with me and then I battle to find a job, or I might find employment in another city, then she has to change schools. Another option I have is wait until I have employment, and then she can join me. Will the RSA and AUS officials and airlines allow her to travel on her own? (She is 15). The reason for this is that hubby wil only join a few months later as he still need to wrap up his business, sell the house etc. Should I just decide on a city and only look for employment only thereI am scared that it will limit my opportunities. Do I wait for employment before looking for a longer term rental, or do I just decide on a suburb and get a rental there? Can anybody recommend a good public senior/high school in Melbourne, any suburb at this stage as the decision still needs to be made where we want to stay? Are there any school that specilaises more in the Mathematics and scientific subjects? I've heard and read that December and January is very slow in terms of finding employment. Will I be wasting my time to arrive before end January or should I arrive +- 2 weeks earlier to register on Centrelink and Medicare and settle? I obtained a quote from IOM to fly on 18 January JHB-SYD-MEL, and it comes to R10900 pp. It sounds like a good price to me - any thoughts? I know it is a lot of questions, but all these and more are racing through my head every day. I will appreciete any feedback! Thanks Tersia

Hello everyone. This is one post I am soooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! happy to be able to make. We did it, we actually landed that illusive rental. A bit of background first. We initially decided to settle down here in Maroochydore but after being here 2 days and bumping into some Saffa's and their Aussie friend we sort of decided to go exploring a bit further north and see what's out there. One of the major reasons for making this move to Australia was for the sake of our child's education and future so why would we want to put her in an OK state school when we could put her in a great state school. Unfortunately the problem with the great state schools is they are zoned for specific areas. We drove up to Noosa and had a bit of a look around and looked at all the state schools in the area and after speaking to some people that live their settled on Peregian Springs state school. Unfortunately this means that we need to live in either Peregian Springs or Peregian Beach areas and the rental market their is tough. There are very few places for rent and a ton of people looking to get in there so that they can send the kids to Peregian Springs SS. I will admit we have been very blessed and I feel that this was just meant to be. We approached all the agents in both the Peregian Springs and Beach areas, got copies of their rental lists and started organising viewings. It's a good idea to know what you want before going into a rental agency because if you don't they just shove a list in your hand and point you in the direction of www.realestate.com.au which is not very helpful. We lined up 2 viewings for Thursday, 2 for Friday, 2 for Monday and 1 for Tuesday. Unfortunately you have to fall in with the set viewing times because the agents have to show the houses to as many people in as short a space of time as possible and they only work from 8:30 to 4:30 and reluctantly do viewings by appointment only on Saturdays. It's also a very good idea to phone at least an hour before the viewing to confirm your attendance because we had 2 viewings that were cancelled a couple of hours before they were meant to start. It can be very annoying if you have a long way to drive to the viewing. In total we saw 7 houses in the respective areas and applied for 2 of them which were about a block apart from one another in Peregian Springs. I was kind of thinking today that we were placing a lot of faith in only applying for 2 of the properties and that we should be more stressed and lining up more viewings and doing more applying but for some reason I was completely relaxed (which is totally out of character for me). We applied for the 1 rental on Monday (4 bed, 2 bath, double lock up garage @ $450 per week) and one rental on Tuesday (3 bed, 2 bath, double lock up garage @ $430 per week). Both agents told us 48 to 72 hours for a response so I settled for the fact that we would only hear if we had been approved on Monday and that it would be another couple of days before we could enrol Jessie in the school. We were in Coles and as Murphy would have it after babysitting the phone the whole day, waiting for the phone call which I didn't think we would get today anyway, I left the phone in the car. Yeah you guessed it, the agent phoned and left a message to call her back. Not having any airtime on the phone I decided to go to Aldi's to get sugar and pop into the agents office which is across the road to find out why they had called. Well the rental we applied for on Tuesday was the rental that we ended up getting. It's got everything we wanted in a house, it's in the catchment area of the school we have chosen and it's the cheaper of the 2 rentals. We didn't even wait for the owner of the other house to make a decision we just withdrew the application and confirmed an appointment for tomorrow (actually today for me now) at 9:00 to sign the lease agreement and then it's off to the school to enrol our daughter. So far things have just worked out which gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside and just confirms for me the fact that we have done the right thing and we are heading in the right direction. We even beat what seemed like impossible odds. There were only 3 places available in Peregian Springs (the rest were all in Peregian Beach, an older area and further from the school). We only applied for 2 of them in Peregian Springs because the third one is only available in the second week of June and we have to be out of this place on 4 May and the 2 rentals we applied for had at least 5 other applicants each (the same 5 applicants for both) and all the other applicants were locals with Jobs. Now tell me this is not meant to be. We are set to get the keys on 3 May and make the move on 3 and 4 May because we are going to have to do 2 trips to get all the stuff we now have to the new house.

Vinksnest - that's what I've sometimes called our home. Figure it out. We arrived on the 9th of April, that's two weeks ago exactly. What a two weeks it has been! As I have written elsewhere, we had one week in Manly, just to give the boys a real holiday and to insure their first impression of being here is a good one. It was great, the apartment with view of the beach and the weather played along. We started with getting all our admin in order: First got our new mobile numbers and data for our iPad and Tab, bought a printer for our temporary HQ. Set up a personal hotspot with the Tab so that the laptop can connect to the Internet. Apply for Tax number, (still waiting on that one). Register with Medicare, sorted. Bank account wit cards, done. My wife had her first meeting with her employment agent who had been in contact with use before we came to Sydney. Everything you do is dependent on your ability to prove who you say you are and the Oz FICA process is rather thorough. The hundred points of ID. Too much for me to explain here but there are quite a few mentions in the forum. Then we moved to Castle Hill, an hour drive from Manly. We looked at a few used cars and after two sets of friends guided us in the direction of Subaru, we found a good 2008 Forester X. Three days later it was ours. Sorted. Converted our drivers licenses to Oz drivers licenses... At RTA , wow, the one in Castle Hill is so efficient. That's we're you also go to register change of ownership of vehicle and you pay 3% on the value of your vehicle for that too (almost like in SA for property) - and, wait for it, that's where you get your e-toll tag too. :-/ Serious house hunting then began. Lucky it's all so convenient with the Internet and sites like : domain.com.au and realestate.com.au . we viewed about 7 properties and filled in an application for one we really liked.... and as my 5 year old says a lot these days; "Wha' do ya know!?" The agent called us today and said we got it. It's unreal. We had no illusions of everything going as planned and that coming here will be roses and moon shine, but so far it is all going in the right direction. Next few days we need to get our children into the school, and hope my wife gets a call back for the one and only interview she did. It 's a little disconcerting that the employment agent is on leave and handed Renita's case over to a colleague. It seems that employment agents demand loyalty and that one shouldn't use multiple agents to find a job. It seems to be the case mainly with niche type professions. Tomorrow we will be contacting all the people who we were told to speak to by people in SA. Maybe there is a connection there that will help us with work. We love the area where we have decided to settle in. Castle Hill is a great suburb with good bus links to the city and good schools and, our favorite, a great shopping centre. We have always lived close to Cresta shopping mall so that is something we are used to. Our rental house is also conveniently located. Today we also discovered that the Weslyan Church which we want to visit, is in the block behind our house and we can walk via a gate in the back garden fence, over the park and onto the church property! too much to tell and too tired to write... Watch this space, ask questions....

Hi all, We decided that it makes sense for us to go and live in South Africa again for a time - business and personal reasons. We are moving at the end of October 2012 after 4 great years in Australia (Adelaide and Perth) where we have met many wonderful people and made life long friends. I have already sold our other vehicle to a dealer here in Mindarie, and the Pajero is available on 31 Oct 2012. It has always been a pleasure to drive and took our family on many great adventures in Australia. If anyone is aware of someone that would be interested in a Pajero with low mileage at a very reasonable price, please feel free to pm me for more details or photos. Regards, FAB For those interested the details are: PRIVATE SALE - VERY WELL PRICED, MINDARIE, WA 2008 Mitsubishi Pajero VRX LWB 4X4 25th Anniversary Edition NS Fuel Injection $33 000 Only one owner and well looked after. Female driver. Very versatile and comfortable vehicle with low mileage. Purchased New in October 2008 Still covered under Mitsubishi 5 year Diamond Advantage Warranty with road side assist until 24 October 2013 Reluctant sale at good price due to international move. MITSUBISHI DEALER WILL SELL ON THE FLOOR FOR $39 990. (This model is currently retailing between $34k and $43k, usually with much higher kms) Available 31 Oct 2012 Details: * 7 seater * Silver * 59960 km * Replaced tyres around a year ago. * Full Service History through Mitsubishi Dealer * Recently serviced (Aug 2012) * Minor paint damage (on plastic side bumper) Additional Fitted Extras: * Towbar * Nudge bar * Boot liner * Plastic colour coded spare wheel cover * Boot privacy cover * UV tinted front windows Lots of included features for 25th anniversary model like: * Leather interior * 3.8-litre V6 SOHC 24-valve MIVEC petrol engine, * Five-speed automatic transmission with Sports Mode sequential style shift change and INVECS II Smart Logic system * 7 Seater with Fold Down in Rear Cargo Area * Satellite Navigation with DVD Player * Reversing Camera and Parking Sensors * Tinted rear windows * Fully Electric Adjustable Front Seats and Heated * Automatic Climate Control Air Conditioning * Separate Climate Control for back * Active Stability and Traction Control * Rear Spoiler * Front and Rear Fog Lamps * Alloy Wheels * Dual Front and Curtain Air Bags * Cruise Control * Electric Windows and Door Mirrors (folding and heated) * Roof Rails * Auto dimming Rear Vision Mirror * 25th Anniversary floor mats (immaculate condition, always been protected by rubber mats)