Some1

Hi
I have been renting for almost 2 years in melbourne

Every 6 months the realestate agent ask to renew the contract, so I renewed it 1st Jan 2015.

Now I got to move to Sydney.

The real estate says that I have to pay rental till the house gets rented by others.

I thought the law says I can leave the house with 1 month notice.

What can I do in that case?

Thanks

msmyrtle

To be honest, it seems pretty standard for a fixed-term lease.

The 1 month thing may refer to a month-to-month set-up

Found this http://www.tuv.org.au/articles/files...ng_a_lease.pdf at the Tenants Union of Victoria, ref second page "Giving up Possession"

Scotty1

You have agreed to rent the place for 6 months from January. You want to break the lease. You would be able to give notice of roughly a month if you had not just signed a new lease. It will cost you money to break your lease - how much will depend on what it says.
Suggest you discuss the need to move with the agent, agree to them advertising and opens, and see if there is any interest. If they find a tenant immediately, you can probably minimise your costs to a lease fee and a few days rent. If you need to move urgently and leave it empty, you could be up for a lot more. Get some advise from tenants union victoria, with the link above.

Molly Coddle

We've just been in this position, unfortunately there's no way out of it sort of speak, you will have to pay rent until the lease gets taken over.
The best advice I can give is advertise the house yourself along with the agents.
Make the house look as attractive as possible and take new photos for the agents and your advertising. If it's in a good school catchment area be sure to mention that.

One thing I noticed is that some agents can be very lazy, the write up and photos for our house, were extremely poor, I often wonder how some of these agents get the jobs they do. In the end I took all of my own photos and directed the agent with the write up. Our house went in the first viewing thankfully.

Good luck.

Bix

And if it looks like your place will not rent easily consider subsidising the next tennant.

Two approaches to this:

1) eg offer 2 weeks free rent
2) offer to subsidise the weekly rent by $20 or whatever.

Either route could mean saving money in the long term.

The Bloke

Additional for the OP, neighbours of mine suggested doing what they have done before....advertise the flat on http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-property...c18364l3005721.....
That way they saved money on the agent advertising....