kristymc

Hi there,

We arrive in Sydney in 4 weeks time, I have an apt booked for 2 weeks once I arrive to hopefully find suitable living accomodation. Do you think this in enough time to find a place to live for the next year?

If not is there anywhere you know of that would lease a property in the manly area for 1 or 2 months at a reasonable price?

Many Thanks

suzimc

Hiya,

It's just the luck of the draw depending on what's available at the time, and what your restrictions are (price, suburbs etc). After looking at some really nasty places that had looked alright on the web, and given the feedback I'd heard previously about how demand far outstrips supply in this area, I began to panic. However, something came up 4 days after we arrived, we looked at it and put down a deposit for them to stop advertising it there and then and by the end of the following week it was ours.

Most people I've talked to about it seem to have managed to find somewhere quite quickly, you just have to make sure you have inernet access from the word go and keep on top of those listings.

We had our short term let for 4 weeks, but in the end only stayed in it for 1 1/2.

If you do end up needing something for a bit longer I found www.rent-a-home.com.au very good when we were finding our place, I'm sure they'll have some places in Manly.

Rosscarbery

Do you know where you want to live? Without some notion of area it's a bit like pin the tail on the donkey and it would be hard to make a decision in two weeks. If you have a good idea of suburbs though, do the rounds of the agents as soon as you get over your jet lag. We had booked our initial accommodation for 3 1/2 weeks and left a few days early as we found somewhere we liked BUT we had to increase our budget as a lot of what we looked at in the price range we had set having kept an eye on the websites over the 12 months before we arrived was pretty crap in reality.

Manly is prime holiday accommodation territory so I guess you might get a slightly better rate on a holiday let if you stayed over 30 nights, but I would think that you would still be looking at a fairly high nightly rate. "Normal" lets are usually a 6 month minimum, anything less than that will probably be holiday lets.

The key to success is internet access - our short term let didn't have it and it was a real pain having to go to the internet cafe a couple of times a day to check what was happening. The best thing is to look on the individual estate agents' websites as they are updated more regularly than domain, realestate etc.

Good luck

kristymc

Hi We want to live in Manly 2095 or close suburbs, there seems to be plenty up for rent so far at our budget $450 a week I just hope that they are not all snapped up before we arrive.

spectralcluster

Securing a short-term let in Manly at a reasonable price is pretty difficult.

We initially stayed in short-term accomodation in Manly for $150 a night for 10days.

When you arrive get hold of a copy of Wednesday's and/or Saturday's Manly Daily free newspaper http://www.manlydaily.com.au/. It lists pretty much all rental properties and their viewing times (I couldn't see them on the online version) which tended to be between 11am and 2pm Sat/Wed. There are also private landlords advertising. I would urge caution if going down this route as there may be a reason for them not using an agent (apart from the fee) - we almost got shafted as the property we initially moved into was about to be turned into a building site.

When viewing you will turn up to property along with a number of other hopefuls and then wait for the estate agent to arrive. We found it necessary to split up as often the times coincided.

Make sure you visit all the estate agents as they may allow you to view a property before the advertised date. This is what we did and ended up putting down a deposit the same day before anyone else viewed. From viewing on Friday we moved in on Wed the following week but could have moved in the following Monday.

Notes:
Remember that furnished properties cost more than unfurnished
At $450 per week I wouldn't plan on living in the centre of Manly. From what I saw 3 weeks ago furnished properties at $520 were fairly grotty but it depends what your expectations are.