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Read before you rent


OnYellowBrickRd

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This is just a word of advice to potential tenants who wish to rent in Australia. When considering accommodation in Australia while moving from South Africa, many people hope to apply for rentals without seeing the property first. This is not legal, but rental agencies bypass this requirement by offering potential tenants a "site unseen agreement". In this agreement the tenant agrees to accept a property despite not having viewed it. BEWARE: Once you have signed the lease for a property YOU ARE LIABLE FOR RENT until the agents can find someone to take over the property from you (whether you actually take occupancy of the property or not). THERE IS NO COOLING OFF PERIOD and even the RTA agrees that once you have signed the lease, there is nothing they can do. We have been caught by this as we were offered site unseen because the agents were not able to arrange a viewing for us in a timely manner. After seeing the property we realised that it was completely unsuitable for our family and we applied to break the lease the very next morning. A month after the fact we have been paying rent for 2 weeks (since commencement of the lease period) for a property that we are not living in. We have appealed to the owner who has basically said, "I'm sorry, but so it goes."
In short: DON'T SIGN a lease unless you, or someone you know well, has actually viewed the property. Property advertisements can be deceiving and paying rent for 2 places at the same time is not a good idea!
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Eish, what a knock.  I must say, I did not know there would be any agents waving the viewing part of it.  It must only happen in areas where the  market is very slow.  In Sydney, there is such a rush of actual viewers on properties, so they dont have to choose people who didnt view.  We realised at our first ever viewing in Sydney, that real estate photographers are not shy to use the old fish eye lense, making the place look massive.  They also use the trick of flooding their photo with light in the editing process, making a cave look like a castle.  Sometimes the photos are of the same property, but it can be photos taken of it years ago.  For the newbies, I cant stress the fact of going in person highly enough.  

 

ps. I hope you and your family manage to overcome this set back very quickly.  

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Update:

The place has finally been leased out and we'll be getting the bond back on Monday.  An expensive learning experience...yet again😣. Perhaps I can sleep again for a change...

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BUT if you SIGN and agreement, NOT seeing the property I'm sure it's fairly strait forward that you taking a risk and need to pay? :o

 

Glad you came right at the end, as you said it can become a costly mistake. B) One thing about real estate agents here is that can make a place look damn nice on photo's!! :ph34r:

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