Margaret3

yep, and a friend of ours was renting a property and never used the oven once and they still tried to take some of the bond for a dirty oven however she contested this and got the money back.

When our agent comes and inspects, she looks at the oven and always says, 'good oven is clean' and i remind her its coz we never use it as we do not want any hassle over it which is why we have a convection microwave oven. Next time i'm going to insist she documents somewhere that we dont use the oven.

If possible i would try to avoid renting a property with carpets , my god, our rental if fully carpeted in cream!!! we have to have them cleaned every 3 months, (and always the day before a rental inspection !), its a costly business.

As with all things in life, you will get decent rental property managers and not so decent ones. In our last rental the property manager was nice, (however that property couldnt get any worse!! lol, ), i find with this property our rental manager is a right cow, and i think its partly coz its a nice, newish town house, and therefore she has some pressure to keep it that way. As i have said before, when i have to rent again i will target an older property as the hassle from this one has been ridiculous and will never , ever use this real estate company again, even if it means cutting my nose off to spite my face.

Mummy3

Does anyone have any good experiences? I have noted advice on photos on arrival, and cleaning for inspections, but please has someone had good experiences?

Margaret3

Our friend has absolutely no hassle (she often says she forgets shes renting and feels like its hers). She rents an apartment and she thinks its actually a real estate company who owns the block, therefore no landlord to appease

OakTree

Of course. We rented an apartment briefly for around 18 months before moving into that ghastly house. Both the agent and owners were absolutely lovely. We never encountered any problems during and after our lease.

elice_in_oz

We never had any grief from agents or landlords in the 5 properties we rented over 7 years before we bought. Only once did the agent keep some of the bond money to replace a cracked window (not sure how it cracked but since we lived in the house at the time, it was our responsibility). It is often down to the individual property manager really and I guess we got lucky all those years. Also, it pays to know your rights as a tenant, and to make sure you communicate with the agent from the start, especially about the initial inspection. Make sure you write everything down, even small scratches and document with photos, with a newspaper in to show the date or emailed straight away to have proof of date.

Bermudashorts

Yes it is a good idea to take photos when you move in and complete the survey etc and send it back. Make sure you cover your back.

We have been renting this house for nearly two years now. We have had one inspection visit in all that time and didn't hear anything afterwards, they didn't even mention the satellite dish we had installed without permission. Agent took a few photos and spent the rest of her time cooing over Edward who was being particularly charming that day (the persian cat).

We have had a couple of issues, most recently hot water stopped working and a plumber and electrician were round the day we reported it.

We keep our side of the deal, we pay on time and they have seen that the house is looked after, we are probably dream tenants. Renting isn't our first choice because there is always that element of uncertainty about it, but we have no choice so we focus on the positive, you have to make the best of it and it certainly isn't all horror stories.

I will always consider myself very fortunate to have spent part of my life living in this fantastic house (that I could never afford to buy ).

NedKelly

I wish I could convince Mrs Kelly to sell up. We could move into a similar place and pay much less in rent than the mortgage repayments and so have extra money to spend.

Bermudashorts

Mmm well I didn't do that. I didn't sell up to have more disposable income, I just didn't own in the first place as a new migrant.

sadieb

I know how you feel, here's my experience:
Rented a brand new appt Hope Island QLD. Had to clean the place from top to bottom when we moved in due to dust, nails, etc.. lying all over the place.
When we left the estate agent said he would come around at 9am.
All our wordly goods were shipped off the day before, so we had a couple of suitcases and the clothes we stood up in.
We stayed up the entire night (I kid you not) and scrubbed the place after the removal van left, didn't have a bed to sleep in ha ha (we had only lived there 6 months) both worked full time and never in the place at the weekend.
I swear it was 10 times cleaner than when we moved in.
Estate agent turned up and knowing we were leaving the state that day basically told us he was keeping $750 of our bond to have the place professionally cleaned as that is what they promised all landlords and they needed to show the landlord the receipt from professional company WTF !!!!!

Rented in Victoria, property pretty new, no problems when we moved in.
We even asked the landlord if we could repaint the whole house at our expense he said OK as long as it was neutral colours (Pissed ourselves laughing at this request) as we were painting over NAVY BLUE and BURNT ORANGE walls ha ha, we painted everything cream and beige (much more pleasing on the eye).
So after 18 months we moved out, we knew the estate agents score by then conning B******S, so I asked if we had to have the place professionally cleaned and they said YES !!! I asked how much and they said we use OUR OWN FIRM !! and it is $350. They has $2000 bond from us (nice house).
So as the house was already spotless as we do like to live in a clean house, we had no choice but to agree.

Now here is the FUNNY PART ha ha ha NOT !!
We moved out, I gave the keys back to the estate agent at 9am.
I walked back round to my old rental and stood outside, with my Aussie next door neighbour
A man in a van turned up, my Aussie friend in her local accent asked the bloke what he was doing. He said I am here to clean the house.
We asked if we could look inside and he said "no worries"
So in all three of us went, he looked around in less than a minute including upstairs, bedrooms, bathrooms, garden, balconies.
He said right we are off.
I said are you coming back to clean it ?
he said he had never seen a place so clean and it's very rare he ever cleans them ANYWAY !!! and that people always pay or they won't get their bond back.

DO NOT LET THEM AWAY WITH IT..
We were suckers. You cannot reason with unreasonable people, so we just walked away.
I only wish I had given the Barstards something to clean !!!
and we had CREAM carpets in both places and used the ovens.

alipally

I just wanted to add that it's not the same everywhere. We rented 2 houses in SA and got our full bond back when we left with no arguments.

The first was a brand new house the second, an older property. Different REA's, and we had a 'inside' dog.....

sadieb

Hi Allipally

I do agree with you, not all places can be the same.
That was just my two experiences.
If I ever returned to Oz (a big IF) I would still rent
only this time I would check before agreeing to rent what the
cleaning arrangements were when we left.
If they had to have their cleaners in believe me it would not be cleaned for a month before we left ha ha.


Glad to read of good experiences, I lived in 2 expensive areas where they probably new they could just rip people off.
I know a lot of my Aussie friends that have been stung as well.

Pollyana

I've found the best way round the cleaning issue is to get the agent to recommend the cleaner. That way the place is cleaned the way the agent likes it cos the cleaners know from experience what the individual expectation is. Also many cleaners who get work from agents in this way will guarantee that if the agent isn't satisfied then they will return and finish the job for free.
I also look at it as the bond money being earmarked to pay the cleaner from the start. A couple of health issues like arthritic wrists mean that I'm not able to do a lot of scrubbing of floors etc so paying a cleaner to do that stuff really isn't something I begrudge, it benefits me healthwise.

Butterfly Bokeh

Sounds like the best idea - duly noted thank you x

We had a rental in Australia a few years back for a short time, I left before my husband did - he always used the garage to enter and leave the property - I always used the front door where a potted tree stood.
yep you probably guessed the tree passed on after I left! So we had to pay for that. I vaguely remember my husband making very specific lists and emailing the agent to report that they'd failed to mention the damaged screens from a previous tenants dog? as we did not have one. Also reported x number of the spotlights in main living room weren't working on arrival - was a very tall ceiling and I didn't fancy changing them so left it that way.
I think they did try to get us to pay for them but we reminded agent that we'd pointed this out in our initial email dated the day we moved in.
So bar $100 for a tree I don't recall being charged for anything else. 1 month after moving out he got an email asking which carpet cleaning company we'd used - we'd already got the bond back so chose to ignore that.

But will definately earmark some money from the bond that may be kept for them to use for cleaning. I guess if you then get the full amount back it'll just be a bonus ???

Pollyana

The way I do it is allow the whole bond amount to pay the cleaners. If they clean to the agents standard I get the whole bond back, which I then use to pay the cleaners. Obviously if the bond is large you should have some left over.

Pomster

we rented in the Cmberwell area via FN in Balwyn.

They were awful.
Tried to accuse us of not cleaning the carpet, despite the agent coming at the same time bloke was unloading his carpet cleaning equipment.
Said the 'brown circular marks on bedroom carpet' noted on the condition report were not the same as cigarette burns....we don't smoke!

Anyway we found that only one bond can be held per property, so were happy to take it to tribunal as it meant the place could not be relet/new bond accepted. Strangely this got the agent moving and our bond was returned.

It should have been too as the place was spotless, and far better than when we moved in...

Good luck