Hi,

From reading several posts on the internet, and from speaking with some folks, I came to know that there are several documents required to rent a house including the:

1- Tenancy statement (Renting history).
2- Employment evidence.

As these are the most required documents for a landlord to feel comfortable to select my application.

In crowded cities like Melbourne or Sydney, we should have 100s of people applying for a good property.

So my question, is it extremely difficult for a new comer to Australia who definitely or (90%) has no job yet (Specially migrants) as he cannot provide any tenancy statements and/or employment evidence ???

While few people say that bank statement could be enough ?, so a bank statement of 20,000 AUD is enough ?

Or the only solution to select a far way house which people has no interest in it ?

I appreciate anyone's advice, but this issue became a nightmare for me, I cannot imagine how difficult to rent a house in Australia, while i had similar issues in Europe and USA but they were minor and 1 month was more than enough to have one of my applications approved.

Thanks
Romeo

This was no problem for us - we secured a rental before I had been offered employment, just needed a couple of references off aussies, which we got from people I had met through this website.

Buzzy

That's probably not the average experience though, particularly at the moment. Rentals in the Wollongong/Illawarra area are exceptionally difficult to get at the moment, regardless of where you have come from and what references you may have. Local press was suggesting last week that available rentals had dropped below 2% of the rental stock.

We have been renting for a couple of years here in the UK since our house sold very quickly...we have references from our 2 previous landlords, & from the Letting Agents which will be especially important because we have a dog. Also we will bring bank statements showing our rent being paid regularly from our account & personal references from friends here.

Hopefully we won't be on the streets for too long

Mate when we arrived it was below 1% in Melbourne - we were surprised how easy it was.

BB

That's good. I'm not in the rental market now so I can only base my info on what I read in the local rags. They are claiming, fairly frequently, that rental availability is currently an issue. Turning up with a big wad of cash and offering six months up front would probably help with that 'issue'.

We thought we would have to do that, however we were treated as if we were regular Australians, we were amazed after all the stories we'd heard.

And when we left the rental in Jan 2010 it took 2 months until new people moved in. It was brand new, great location and the rent wasn't unreasonable so we were quite surprised about that too.

BB

You need 100 points of identification for every adult over 18 who will live there (even if married), this includes passports, references, income details and much more.

We went to 2 open houses on the outskirts of Sydney yesterday, one large one for $900 per week, there were only us and 2-3 more other groups looking at it, we where the only ones to take an application form. The other was nearby and much smaller but about $600 per week, before it opened there where cars queued up the street and about 50 people went in to view, many, many people where applying. We're going for the $900 one as it was a much nicer much bigger house. Both are 1 hour commute from central Sydney!

We've looked at lots of places up to (and in some cases beyond) $1,000 per week, and see very few nice ones, very many crapholes. The nice ones go in no time, often before you can get to see them (wife tries every day) the crapholes (which are still expensive, like $800-$900 per week) seem to hang around on the market for ever.

Yes, I do think its difficult to find a nice house to rent in Sydney, we have perfect references, can show at least 1 years rent in the bank (not counting other investments) and I have a job at a Sydney investment bank.

Hi

We found it easy as pie here in Cairns, as long as we had money in our account and could prove it that all what was needed.

Thanks a lot for your help.

I talked to couple of my Aussies friends over there, they need to know what kind of references they can provide ?, if it is a letter what they should write in it ? or what ?

Thanks...
Romeo

Yes, I believe that paying 6 months in advance should gurantee my application acceptance (90% at least).

Great Idea.

Thanks
Romeo

Is that really actually that low a vacancy rate? It's the rate you would expect if, for instance, the average tenant moved every two years and the property was vacant for an average two weeks between every rental, roughly. (Isn't it? I'm not great at maths - I'm going by the fact that if every property were vacant for 1 week per year, that would be a bit less than 2%).

My daughters 20 year old boyfriend and his two mates have just secured a rental in Blackburn area, no probs, now if they can do it, anyone can

We are toying with the idea of using a relocation agent, mainly because we have two cats and we have heard that that makes it particularly difficult and they could do some of the leg work. We aren't sure yet though.

Pass. All I can say is that local press are representing it as 'historically low' and a problem for local employers, namely Bluescope Steel, trying to bring people into the area for temp contracts.