Laurastray

Hi. Me, my husband and 3 children are hopefully emigrating to australia end of next year on a permenent visa. We are looking to move to perth and wanted to know the best suberbs to move to. My husband is a carpenter so will need to take that into consideration. Also my kids are aged 9,6 and 4 so need good schools nearby. We are looking to pay around 450 dollars a week rental. Would prefere a house with yard if possible?
We currently live in a semi rural location in a 4 bed house in a quiet village but close to all amenities so looking for something similar in perth. We currently live in the uk.
Many thanks for your help xx

jackieh23

Hi Laura - Welcome.

There are many threads on Perth so I suggest settling down and having a read back through the Forum.

Have you visited Australia, specifically Perth? Have you any idea what to expect?

In relation to location, Perth is a sprawling city. There are no "quiet villages" like the UK. People travel many kms for work. This place is very car centric. Travelling times during peak hours have increased in the past 5 years, although a recent survey by Main Roads has seen a small improvement due to infrastructure upgrades.

Your hubbie's occupation will see him need to travel around. I would think finding a job and then knowing the likely area of work would be your best idea in defining your home location.

We have a "north"and "south"scenario in Perth. The Swan River defines this and having to travel from one side of the river to the other during peak times is a PITA. Have a look at www.whereis.com to get some idea of what I am alluding to here.

$450 will not get you much in way of a rental. I assume a 4 bed is required with 3 kids? That amount is right in the most popular bracket for rentals and whilst the market is changing - obtaining a rental in Perth can be hard work. May I strongly recommend you have only one "non negotiable" when looking (besides being clean of course) - must have air conditioning. It is surprising (to me anyway) how many rentals don't have whole of house air con.
Check out this web site for an idea of what is available and use whereis to put the locations into context.
www.reiwa.com.au

Schools are much of a muchness IMO. There are government (public) schools and then there are private (religion based) schools such as Anglican and Catholic. The private schools are required by law to take other than their faith in small numbers to ensure government funding. Costs of private school vary dramatically.

The Government has a system which tests kids in 3 grades and then ranks the schools based on the kids' results. This system as you can imagine has been rorted by some schools (proven) in an attempt to achieve a higher rank but the results can be found here if you believe they can be of use:
http://bettereducation.com.au/results/WA/all.aspx

Hope this info gets you started...

verystormy

Your budget is going to be a struggle for most of Perth to be honest. As said there arent many things like where you live now. There are some small towns but i cant think of any i would recomend. I live on the edge of a medium sized town - Mandurah in a semi rural location called Dawesville. You can probably pick up a nice house there for your budget, but we are not Perth - about 100km south of Perth, though there is a train that goes to Perth every 10 minutes and takes less than an hour from Mandurah.

If you do want to live more rural, do factor in things like bush fires which can affect a lot of the rural communities - the area near where i live was devasted a couple of years ago.

Laurastray

Thanks for the reply. By saying semi rural I didn't mean I wanted to be out away from everything. I'm happy to be in more busy places but would prefere not to be living in a town itself so the outskirts would be great.. Just wanted a couple of ideas where to look first before we start looking at rentals and see how far it is from any work my husband finds.
Many thanks

sonlymewalter

welcome laura I just wanted to say I keep reading your name as Laura ashtray

good luck with the move mate

Laurastray

Lol. Funny you should say that my husbands name is Ashley and his nickname at school was ashtray!!!

Laurastray

Many thanks. For your reply. I think that's a good idea to see where the work is first. May stay in a caravan site for a couple of weeks as well so we've got more time to look at areas and schools x

spouse of scouse

Hi Laura, I found the below description of Perth which includes descriptions of some suburbs, ease (or not) of getting around, schools etc. I've lived in Perth all my life and I agree with the majority of the report's content. The first few examples are mainly about Sydney, the remainder of the report is solely about Perth. I hope it helps a bit
http://www.viacorp.com/perth-suburbs-compared.html