MrPJB

Panic has set in, we are putting our house on the market this month, but we are struggling to find somewhere to stay for the short term when we get to Brisbane! I have a wife and three kids, so unfurnished rentals don't look too easy to sort out so we are looking for a furnished rental (for around 3 months). I thought this sort of thing would be easy to find (looking in the Redlands/Wellington Point area btw). But we can't find anything suitable?? Eeek, homeless and no-where to go! What did other people with families do? We don't have any family/friends out there that we could stay with.. Any suggestions????

Thanks in advance

Paul, Lan and the nippers

Wendy

Not in Brisbane, but we booked into www.big4.com.au for two weeks. We just booked a cabin for the 4 of us, it was like a holiday

They have parks all over Australia.

VikkiL

We are doing the same, we are booking a cabin for all of us for 2/3 weeks. Determined to get a little 'rest' before the fun starts!!!

Scotschick

Hi

We are staying at the Manhattan Apartments on Newstead. 2 bed, 2 bath fully furnished. Apartments can be found on www.seqrents.com.au

MrPJB

Thanks for the links, it's interesting the different approaches people are taking. We were looking to do this sort of thing, rent furnished 2/3 months while looking to buy and job hunting etc, then move into lovely house. Are we being a tad naive? With 3 kids in tow we need to get it right, but what is the best approach? Should we be looking for long term rental from the word go?

My brain hurts......

Paul

Urno

Our plan is to have a two week holiday (we have two kids), then move into a furnished house for 1 month, before effortlessly breezing into an unfurnished 6 month let (via Ikea and an open cheque book!).

Sounds easy doesn't it, but i'm sure organising it will be stressful

I'm also hoping the seqrents site will be helpful...

MrPJB

The unfurnished rental plan scares me, all that "stuff" that you need to buy and then sell again when our "container" arrives with all our worldy possesions. It wouldn't be as bad I guess if we didn't have the children as we would get by on the bare essentials. I'm having nightmares about timing being off and being homeless !!!

Eeek


Paul

Urno

We totted up the cost to replace things we wanted (maybe) to take, and it came to about 3200 quid. Working on the basis that a container is about 3500 quid, we've decided to ditch all of our stuff and buy totally.

It is a headache timing it all isn't it? And we reckoned that trying to factor in a container was too much bother.

And with "emigration" baggage allowance you can fit quite a bit in 8 suitcases

Sandra

Ok - I am as mad as cheese

But seriously...........if you moved 200 miles in the UK could you get a furnished rental for 6-8 weeks until you sorted a six month furnished rental, before buying the perfect four bed with pool. All with kids!

Well basically if the answer is no .....you ain't going to find it happening in Aus unless you do a lot of work.

I do say it can happen....we did it of sorts....six weeks staying in furnished apartments $100 a night for a two bed with everything (2002). Husband not working spent all six weeks finding a rental in the area we had planned on before leaving. We ended up in a crap five bed wooden nightmare no pool for 14 months ... but right area!!!! we planned for and we took the knocks.

Take your Aus expectations and see if they seem realistic in the UK...if yes then go looking for the same here. It will be about.

Regards

Baz

Hi There,

We now live in Wellington Point (great area by the way,) and had the same problem. Furnished rentals are very hard to come by, and most of them are for corporate types in the city centre, i can't imagine it would be too practicle for you. We spent a very depressing week looking for property, by looking at the listings in the papers, we found one furnished property and calling it a hovel would be too nice. In the end the way we found somewhere, is by ringing all the real estate agents in the area we wanted to live (Wellington Point,) and asking what rental they had available. We started making the calls one morning, and we had a place by the end of the day. I would suggest taking a six month lease out on a place (unfurnished,) and then renting your white goods (fridge, washing machine etc,) from Castle Hire. I think the website is www.castlehire.com.au you can rent pretty much whatever you want from them (beds, kitchen stuff, tv's, furniture,) for between one month to however long you want. It was easy to set up, we looked at what they had on their website, called them, and they delivered the stuff two days later.

If i was to do it all again, i would not even bother looking for furnished accomidation, there is just so little out there, and many landlords do not like kids and pets, so if you have either it is even worse. I would not bother looking at the rental adverts in the papers either, i would just ring up the agents and do it that way.

DagBoy

And probably the main reason for that is that it is not really economically viable to rent places out for short term furnished lets. I know, we did it for a while and the extra money we made (compared with just renting a place long term unfurnished) was simply not enough to compensate for all the time we had to put in dealing with cleaning and preparing the house between tenants. Add to that the fact that we had some real whingers (who epitomised the whole whinging Pom stereotype) and it was simply not worth our while. We found people wanted (expected) all the services and extras we offered, but did not want to pay for them. Ah, well, it was a learning experience.

We did have some lovely tenants and met some realy nice people as well, but deciding to stop offering the service was one of the best decisions I have ever made since being here in Aus.

You do not have to buy a whole heap of new furniture or rent all the whitegoods, I know several people who have done the following:

• get a furnished holiday let for a week or two while you get your bearings
• find a 6 month unfurnished let in the suburb you think you like (that's the hard bit)
• be prepared to have a rental that is a bit older/crappier/pokier than you would like, then when you buy you will be moving to a better house - rather than renting a lovely house and finding that all you can afford to buy is a less good one
• buy the minimum furniture you can survive with - if you have a big fridge on its way in your container, buy a small cheap on, otherwise buy a decent one now. I know one family that used a new outdoor setting as a dining table for 6 months (they left their container in storage until they bought a house) and had a couple of futons as beds - that now are spare beds in their rumpus room.

Cheers,

DagBoy

emmyjc1

Hi Paul
I have sent you a PM
Thanks
Emma x