question about rental agreements
 

Hi, I was just wondering how long we would have to sign a rental agreement for unfurnished accomodation,or does it vary. Also how long do people usually rent for before buying a house,any advice would be great

Thanks

Re: question about rental agreements
 

Most leases are for 12 months but you can ask for 6 months or less, although it's harder to get the landlord to agree to a shorter lease. If you need to break the lease, you will be liable for rent up until a new tenant moves in and for a portion of advertising and reletting costs pro-rata of remaining time on lease. This applies to Victoria, not sure if it's the same in other states. Also, when the term of the lease is up, most landlords will agree to go on a month to month lease.

As for how long you rent before you buy, there is no way this can be answered. It depends on your circumstances. Do you need to save up for a deposit? Do you know where you want to buy? Can you get a mortgage? And most importantly, you need to find the right house and be successful at auction or make a successful offer. Most people I know spent the best part of a year trying to buy. We spent 8 months of actively looking - that means going to open for inspection every weekend, ringing agents every week, bidding at auctions, making offers and generally spending a lot of time looking - before we bought our house. We had been renting for years in different suburbs before we were in a position to buy and we knew where we wanted to live. Everybody will have a different story.

Re: question about rental agreements
 

6 month leases are standard in QLD. You would be best advised to consider all your options for housing though. Buying in the current market could prove seriously detrimental to your financial health (think scenarios where your house loses 50% plus of it's value where you have a 80 to 90% mortgage, you'd hypothetically be in deep doodoo). Renting for the medium to long term could be much less risky.

Re: question about rental agreements
 

You will need time to get your funds over here and spend time looking for the right property and location. Then there is the lead time from making an offer to completion. A six-month lease is the bare minimum I would take because you don't want anything shorter in case of unforeseen problems. Longer terms may be costly if you don't find a replacement tenant. Bon chance!

Re: question about rental agreements
 

We were offered the choice of 6 or 12 months on our rental. Renewals of the lease can also be either 6 or 12 months depending on what we want to do. We opted for 6 months in case we decided we didn't actually like the area. Been here a couple of weeks & I love it, the only downside is that we back on to a pub & I keep loosing hubby over there :sneaky:

Alison x