Rental references

[Dedrei]

G'day everyone

These rental references.... We are looking at settling in a more permanent rental and bigger of course . What should a rental reference say more or less. We owned our house in SA, heard that we need to get the estate agent to write a reference. What should I tell them to right in it? Also can the guy that we are renting from now also provide a rental ref? Even though we will be breaking lease, but will be paying the few weeks rental that are left on the contract anyways.

Any suggestions?

[sa2auz]

Hi there

There references could be from any source. We got one from the agent that sold our house saying we kept it in brilliant condition the garden was well maintained that our house was just generally well looked after and that our electricity, water, lights, levys rates taxes etc were all paid up.

You can get letters from your neighbours saying that you didn't have loud parties and that your dogs didn't bark and that you were nice quiet or friendly neighbours etc.

You can get a reference from your employer or church saying you are off good character etc.

For those people who have permenant residence a copy of the visa can help and also copies of any bank statements are also a big plus.

My hubby works for a bank in their security division and I think this helped alot as the bank wouldn't employ anyone with any funnies in their past.

Good Luck

[Riekie]

The purpose of the references are to establish if you will be a problem renter or not. If you owned your house in RSA, hold a job in Aus, and can provide any evidence that you are stable and of good character, that's all they want to know. Here, more than one family will/can apply to rent a specific home. Your paperwork is like an "interview" for the owner to decide which of the families he would accept to rent his house.

We had a letter from our church confirming our membership, participation & character. We also had a letter from our volunteer work in RSA. On the application form, we indicated that we owned our home in RSA in which we resided for 14 years. (We had not written proof of this). We supplied our credit card details and employment details for financial references. They contacted my husband's employer to confirm his employment (only because he haven't yet received his first payslip in Aus - which would have been enough proof of employment). The owner was flipping backwards over the moon to get us into his house!!

I think they have a lot of cases where people move in, wreck the place, don't pay their rent and then leave without notice, so you can't really blame them for being a bit over the top when you want to rent a property. You should have no problem getting approved!!

[zappa]

we got a place easily without a reference