advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Hello I am after some advice off all those who have already made the journey across.

We are leaving on the 4th August and have a 3 week rental booked, my question is...... is this long enough to do all of the formalities on arrival, buy a car and find a longer term rental before the 3 weeks are up and we are officially homeless.

If anyone can comment from own experiences it would be much appreciated.

Gill and John

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

I can be done.. don't panic, wait until you been here a week or 10 days then decide, the hardest thing on your list is finding a rental ! Make that a priority !

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

We did it in 2 :blink: Brisben is right, concentrate on finding a rental first and worry about car etc later. I'm sure you will be able to extend your 3 week rental if needs be.

Where in Australia are you off too? Oh, and happy travels :)

Lynn xx

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

We had everything done in 10 days (Rental / Car / Banks / Tax file No etc etc )

Although that was 4 yrs ago, so had no real problems finding a rental

Good Luck

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Hi Gill & John

We booked a rental for 2 weeks in the hope of getting everything sorted in this time

We got a car sorted dead easy.....click here for cars......nearly all dealers are willing to negotiate price so make sure and haggle with them......and you will have to pay cash for them as well......you WILL NOT get finance until you have been in full time employment for 3 months or 12months for casual employment....we have just found this out when trying to get a 2nd car.

Rentals were a different story though.....we had bother with some agents because we had no previous rental refferrences.....make sure you have a copy of your bank statements showing the amount of money you currently have as this is accepted to most real estate agents.......click here for real estate.

Make sure and check out your area before you arrive to figure out rental availability......1 thing we found is there were less houses for rent than we had previously seen and that there was competiton for any available rentals.

! other thing to do is get a po box.....costs about $80 per year and means you will not need to transfer mail etc if and when you change rentals.......I would do this asap as everyone will want a postal address.....from tax file no.....to driving license etc......this is a must.

Hope this helps a bit.


Mark and Gill

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Agree with most of this but a few things would say...

Driving licenses - you can change them any time so that is not a priority and I know people say it is good to have that for ID, but with UK picture licenses there was nowhere we found that did not accept this and a passport...

Rental will always be a pain. And you need a car to drive and see them. Thus hiring a car will cost money of course, but it is easy to buy.

To save time, we bought our car on a UK credit card - no problem at all. From a Ford main dealer as well. Then picked up a few days later when a few bits were sorted out.

I disagree that you will not finance if you have only just moved here. When I moved here the first time, the very thing thing I did was to go and order a new car. Finance was through the dealer, with my temp working visa and UK driving licence, and it was approved. OK rate - not great but then dealers never are but not weighted because I was a new immigrant. Thus it can (or could) be done.

Rental searching rapidly changes from exciting to boring - hence I'd look to that first as it always takes longer to get approved by the agency and the landlord, and then there may be a date to move in so I'd focus on that first and the car second in between looking at properties.

Then it's hitting medicare and getting a TFN. Things like doctor probably best after you have found somewhere to live for ease of moving around.

The PO box is also a good idea, but again, it all depends on where you end up living as you don;t want to drive past 4 post offices to get your mail each day.

Three main places to look for houses

www.realestate.com.au

www.realestateview.com.au

www.domain.com.au

Many are replicated across the other sites though...

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

I would echo most of the comments made here, that 3 weeks should be long enough to get sorted out, but it will be a busy 3 weeks. Make sure to work at it every day, otherwise you'll find you should possibly have started some things sooner.

We focussed on the car search first, as we found car hire to be quite expensive. Ended up taking delivery of car within 5 days, but could've done that sooner. We found that finance was not going to be possible (was told by banks & car dealership that they wouldn't easily approve it unless we had a job first, and all recommended we find another way to pay), but that could be due to the current economic conditions, with banks & finance houses tightening their lending criteria.

While we were out looking at cars, we would also stop in at estate agents along the way, get their listings, and do some drive-by's and get an idea for the area. There are a lot of rentals that don't make it onto the internet sites, so do make sure to get the listings from the agents as well. On that topic, we didn't find the rental market to be nearly as crazy as others have said, in fact, a few months down the line, I am still seeing some of the same places available for rent that were available when we looked (and no, there was nothing wrong with those places, and they were fairly priced comparing to other properties). This gives me the impression that the rental market is not necessarily as buoyant in some sectors as agents would like you to believe...

For rentals, you will need lots of paperwork though, so make sure to get the bank accounts set up asap. It will also take a week or so for cards & pins to come through, but in the meantime, as soon as the account is set up ask for a printed statement with your address on it, you'll use this for a lot of things - buying the car, car registration, rental application, phone, etc.

In terms of post, if you're getting post re-directed from the UK, consider using Travellers Contact Point here in Aus, they will re-direct post within Aus, and you can update your address with them online, no hassle. Great for being able to change where your post gets to once you're a bit more settled here.

Good luck!

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Good point actually.... the other thing to note is that sometimes, not all agents are as.... how shall we say? .... motivated... to get things done as quickly as you'd like ;)
Our agent really dragged her feet, which ended up delaying our moving in date by more than a week. It wasn't really an issue for us as we were staying with relatives, but if time is pressing for someone else, you may need to keep reminding agents to get on with things for the rental agreement.

Also, read the rental agreement carefully, and remember to change anything you don't agree with. Ours was riddled with mistakes, and we ended up changing the clauses, but having to move in anyway, as the agent had gone on holiday for a couple of weeks. We made sure to explain all the changes we'd made to the lease though, and they were accepted fine.

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

3 weeks is plenty of time. We booked into a caravan park for 2 weeks but only stayed there a week. It took us a week to buy a car, find a permanant rental and we moved into it the following weekend after arriving. I emailed all the local estate agents near where we wanted to rent explaining my situation what we where looking for etc, this helped nearer the time. If you haven't got work we just showed mortgage statements from home and a bank statement here showing you have at least 6 months rent available. Don't know if you have done so already but we opened a westpac account in Uk, on the internet, easy, then just go into the branch when you get here and show passports then you can withdraw. We initially hired a car for 2 weeks but as we found one after a week took it back early and got a refund, car hire is expensive and the excess thing they charge per day a rip off, if your a competent driver i wouldn't bother with it. Tax file number we did online and medicare is just a case of going there and showing passports, form filling. It will all fall into place then you can enjoy, good luck!

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

I have just been trying to get finance in the last 2 weeks......trust me......at the minute it's a no go.

Mark and Gill

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Hi Lynn
We are heading for Queensland, we have a couple of areas which we will visit on arrival, and now of course because the rental could be the pain, we will have to make our minds up fast.

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Thanks for all the replies, I think we understand now the rental is the most important priority. Don't think I will stop panicking though until everything falls into place. I wouldn't care so much if it was just the two of us, but we also have two children and a dog to consider.

Thanks again
Gill

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

Three weeks is plenty - we did it, only waited three weeks to move into rental as it was Christmas.

Good luck

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

You may find the dog is the sticking point. It is harder to find a rental with a pet so you may have to promise that they will be only an outdoor pet or put down an extra bond or something. All depends on where you want to rent of course but I know around here it is incredibly difficult as there are so many pet-less tenants who seem like better bets.

Good luck!

Re: advice needed from those already in Oz
 

We moved here in May and what I'd add/agree with is:

• Most rentals that are advertised are ready (or almost ready) for you to move in. They often seem to put in a date of when the rental will become available if it isn't available immediately.
• The agent will do very little for you - they're there on behalf of the property owner, not you. So if you see properties you like, get in a car and have a really good look round the neighborhood yourself. Don't expect the agent to make any really useful recommendations themselves.
• I found using googlemaps and streetview really useful for shortlisting potential properties.
• Make sure you have easy access to the internet - you'll need it a lot for this process. In fact if I was to do it again, that would be one of the key criteria for my initial accommodation.
• You'll need lots of documentation for the agent before you'll get approval: evidence of employment (my contract worked fine), evidence of cash (bank statements), evidence of identity (bank statements, passports, driving license, medicare card...)
• When you have a spare hour get your medicare card sorted out - easy to do and immediately gives you some "local" evidence of identity very quickly. The same with your TFN - sort it out online and then let your bank know so they charge you the correct tax on any interest.
• We found getting a car finance easy through the dealer - but he said that was because we were only after 50% finance. Getting the finance is useful as it starts to build your credit history here.
• I agree with the others - car comes after rental. And haggle - the dealers especially are all feeling a bit desperate at the moment.

And make sure you actually take the odd day off to really relax: the flight can be tiring, and the whole move can be quite draining. Fortunately, going to bed ridiculously early is seen as entirely normal in Queensland :D