kali

sigh,
We are leaving for Sydney in September and are looking for some place in CBD and around.
My OH started panicking on finding suitable accommodation. Besides the high prices we also noticed that almost all, if not all, flats have carpet. Now this is a huge problem because my OH is allergic to HDM and gets asthma attacks from them.

Does this just make it much harder to find a place to stay or is it just us that focus to much on this thing?

Thanks!

Iwannabethere

You may have more luck looking for a small house or at least a ground floor flat. Many apartments have carpet to dampen the noise between floors. Most people don't want to hear every step, the TV/radio or anything else their neighbours do and carpet is the obvious solution.

Kooky.

Hi Kali, I found the same when looking about 3 months ago. We have cats so carpets were a bad idea (also, I hate them!). You may find newer apartments have wooden floors as they're more in vogue these days, and also old houses - like ours - but those in between may have nasty concrete or damaged floors disguised by carpets.

Don't stress 'til you get here!

kali

Thanks for the replies,

Do you know if it would be really hard to find something? We are looking for something in between $500-$700/week.
We have some friends and my employer contacting the agencies already to see what is available.

Kali

Kooky.

There really is no point looking seriously now unless you are prepared to pay rent for an empty apartment, and even then I think it would be difficult to arrange from afar. By all means keep an eye on domain.com.au to see what kind of property is available in your budget, but don't fall in love with one!

Sorry to sound negative but the Sydney rental market is very competitive; you generally go to an Open House along with tens of other people and then put in an application to rent it. Some want a cheque on the spot. It's a Landlord's market and they can afford to be choosy, so you have to make sure all your paperwork is in order (not always easy as a foreigner) and maybe offer 6 months' rent up front or something like, to make yourselves an attractive tenant.

We were very lucky but we compromised on space, and we applied on our looksee - which is not something we originally planned but having cats severely limited our options - and then we had to pay for 3 or 4 weeks before we actually migrated. We had planned to go into a serviced apartment but ended up coming straight to the house and having to rent furniture for a month until ours arrived.

Is your employer relocating you? If so, could you get a looksee and maybe do what we did - ours paid for our rent and furniture in lieu of a serviced apartment, as it was actually cheaper for them.

(Do a search on Sydney Rentals and you'll see some threads where I and others have recounted our experiences.)