Hi all

Just thought I would post this one to see if its doable, or am I just doing it the wrong way.

Right, in a nutshell cant sell my house and cant just rent it forever for various reasons, therefore we are gonna rent for 6 months and vica versa just to see what happens. Gonna do april - sept in perth, have managed to get 6 months off school here if I obviously school them there and will be looking for 6 months work.

Will this be enough time to see if the place is for us are do you think I should take a knock on the house and go for it. Other factors include one of my boys due to start secondary school at 11 and the other his gcses in september, both bad times to move kids for a year or so and then try and get them back.

If we had sold the house we would have paid off everything and just gone for it, now we will be coming with 5k if lucky, is this enough, I am a building services engineer so hopefully should get a job quickish.

Any comments

Mick

Hi Mick, I would never tell someone what to do because it is not my place but can I just tell you what questions sprung to mind when I read your post. I may not be the right person because i am not even in Perth myself yet but hope to be by end of feb, with my two teenage children.

First renting your house. Are you using an agent? have you considered landlord insurance? what happens if the tenants wont move out and you need to move back into your house. I am renting my house out, paying an agent 10% of the rent for their service, which includes landlords insurance, which covers non payment of rent (except the first month) and all legal fees if i need to get the tenant out. I am also going to try and leave any profit from the rent in the bank for at least six months as an emergency fund for repairs etc.

Could you try and secure a job before you go. Then you know that you would have some money coming in asap. Even if you hated the job it would only be for six months.

Does you 11 year old need to sit his sats exams at the end of year 6. These help the secondary school decide which sets the children should go into. Have you checked with your older sons school to make sure they dont start doing GCSE work before September? Some schools start early as there is a lot to fit in.

I am not sure about the money side of it. Flights, short-term furnished rental, car hire, long term furnished rental (not sure if there are any but i think you can hire furniture), extras. But then again I am not letting money stop me. Things are going to be very tight for us but we are used to that anyway.

I hope it will take me no more then a month to get us into a long term let, the children into to school and all of the important stuff set up. So if it took you that long it would still give you five months to try it out. What if you dont want to come home? could you rent your house out for another six months? You could always have it set up with an estate agent before you go so that if you want to sell in six months you only have to inform the agent by e mail. I will be leaving my house details with a couple of estate agents in case i want or need to sell my house.

What ever you decide to do I wish you and your family luck. I have had many doubts during the whole visa process and i know how stressful it can be

Mandy

Thanks for the reply, it sounds like you will be in a similar boat to us and are just getting on with it, which is probaly what we will do, and just see what happens.

My oldest sons school have been very good and my youngest unfortunately is dyslexic so i am not worried to much with the sats as these will just stress him out, all I need to do is ensure he has his place in case we come back which should be ok and he can enjoy the oz life which is a little less pressurised on children so will be good for him.

All should be good and am sure it will work for us all.

Cheers

Mick

Lots of good point from Mandy - re the SATS (which clearly you're not worried about anyway!) but there's no need to be concerned, secondary schools don't place too high a value on SATS as they are so intensively coached. SO they might be used as a guideline, because that's all there is to go on, but not having SAT scores wouldn't count against a kid.

Mick if you can, fight hard to make sure your youngest stays in sets that match his ability, not his literacy. (with the possible exception of English, depending on how it is provided at the particular school.) Make sure all his teachers understand this, especially his form tutor & head of year. It could make all the difference. (You may be doing this already, in which case good on you!)

Good luck with it all!

Hi Mick,

We came over in similar circumstances as regards the house. I think you need to get a line of credit arranged, as setting up here in Aus gobbles the cash faster than you would think.

What springs to mind in particular is transport. To get around, you might find a car invaluable, and they're not cheap to buy. You might want to budget for a rental until you get a feel for how things are going.

Rather than drag the whole family back if you have problems re the UK house, I'm resigned to popping back myself to sort things if need be.

Go with your instincts re the school thing.

Q