Accomodation for 1 in Adelaide

[Nat]

Hi

My husband is moving over in June to look for work (we have 3 years temp residency) and a house to rent. I will resign my job in South Afrcia and follow with the 3 kids once this is done.

He needs a place to rent for one for the time when he is searching for work.

Any suggestions?

Are there specific areas to avoid?

Any idea what rent should be?

Any idea who to contact, real estate agents etc?

[Annette]

Good Heavens Nat, you are such brave people.

I'm not entirely sure whether your questions relate to rental for him, or for all of you so if my answer seems unrelated to your question, let me know and I'll try again.

It is incredibly difficult to answer either without an idea of budget so I'll assume middle of the road.

My personal choice for him will be Majestic Apartments: http://www.majestichotels.com.au/mrgh_overview.htm. Serviced and all very well located. The Majestic Roof Garden couldn't be better located for someone who has to attend interviews, needs to use public transport etc. My personal favourite though would be the Old Lion in North Adelaide.

There are many areas to avoid and many which will some will love and others will loathe. It will be extremely obvious what to avoid when you drive around. Broken old cars, unkempt gardens, half naked snotty nosed children are all clues to look out for. Adelaide has so many suburbs that it's almost impossible to provide any kind of sensible analysis of them. Look at what others have written previously. It has been discussed many times. Also use Google - A LOT. A very general rule is that the more expensive, the "better" (Duh, I know, but I don't know what you can afford). We live in Joslin. It's great. Very conveniently located, next to Linear Park, near the city. I wouldn't make any decisions until you know where your husband will be working. He wouldn't want to commute too far. Then look at good schools. You don't say how old the kids are so it's impossible to comment on schools.

Rent will depend on how "good" the suburb is, how good schools in the area are, how near the city, how large the house is etc. etc. etc. You can pay anything from $250 to $1500 per week depending on what you want and where you go. There seems to be a bit of an invisible border around $500 a week. Under that can be extremely variable and you may have to sift through a lot of properties before finding one that's OK. Above that most places should be acceptable. It's too hard to say what rent "should" be if we won't know what you're aiming for in terms of size, location and level of luxury.

Who to contact for what?

Estate agents - scum of the earth, but you probably already know that. Don't expect them to do much. Here they basically advertise and sign contracts. You will have to look in the papers or on realestate.com.au and show up at the opens and contact them for an appointment. They have opens for 15 min at a time any day of the week, usually over lunch time and around 4:30 - 5pm. Agents here do not show people around and do not provide lists of rentals etc. They do not have to work hard to find tenants, so they don't. Also look at sites like AdelaideBrits or PomsinAdelaide for good info.