Olibeneli

My wife goes out mid Jan with our boys - so that they start school in Feb.

I am staying in UK to oversee house sale and organise removals.......so it's all not perfect organisation by any means.

What documents will my wife need to rent a place out there ?....we hear that you have to inspect places you may rent by law......so once she sees them and wants to rent it what documents are needed?....she will be in NSW by the way.

Also - can you negotiate on the rental ?

cheers

Izzy

We are in Melbourne, but there didn't seem to be any hard and fast rules, we just took anything we thought was useful. We took a print out of a credit reference we obtained from Equifax in the UK. We took bank statements, mortgage statements and we got our estate agents to sign a nice letter saying how well our house had been kept. We also rented for 4 months before coming out here - so we got a letter from our landlord as well. You could even get a personal reference - or perhaps one from a neighbour. Our agent didn't follow any of our references through - she said that she just got a feel about us from the number of docs we gave her and how we came across. Hope this is useful

Rabc

There is a 100 point scheme which most estate agents seem to use up here. You need to provide 2 main types of ID. Passport, Driving Licence (UK is fine) and a bank card (again UK is fine). Aus bank statements/accounts etc are very useful as is proof of income/sufficient savings. Make sure you have 2 people willing to act as references (it doesnt matter who as long as they are not family) - email addresses speed things along. It's quite a simple process. We turned it round in about 48hrs

Hope it helps

Rob

binbird

Hiya

We are in NSW and had difficulty in getting a rental property as we had no income at the time. However, we got round this by showing a healthy bank balance and agreeing to pay six months rent in advance.

Basically you will need to provide 2 copies of proof of ID. Agents are generally understanding of the fact that you have come from overseas so anything that you can bring with you to vouch for your credit worthiness and responsibility as a homeowner or tenant is well worth while. One thing to note is that all adults should fill in a separate application form so I don't know how you will get around this if you are not both here at the same time. I am sure you can explain it to the agent at the time though - it may just mean that when you join your wife you have to sign the agreement separately and provide your id etc at that stage.

As far as negotiating is concerned I guess it depends on the demand for the type of property that you are interested in. Most rental homes are viewed on an open house system whereby the property will be open for a short period on a Wednesday or Saturday (usually no longer than 20 minutes) and if lots of people are viewing, imo, you would be silly to try and get the property for lower than the advertised price for risk of losing it.

Hope some of my waffle helps!

Binbird