Friday 6 January 2012

Flat Hunting Sucks!

In my previous post, I said that I wanted to be more motivated this year in certain things, the most prominent of which is finding a new flat.

A little under two months ago, my girlfriend and I moved out of our studio flat about half an hour north of Perth city. The flat was not too bad, but it was a little small for us, and the ant and spider problems were becoming more of an issue, so we had decided not to renew the lease.

I'm a little disgruntled to say that since then we have been living in a mix of hostels and hotels, unable to find suitable accommodation. We have set ourselves a reasonable maximum price and know the areas in which we are happy to live, but a mix of bad luck, bad timing (the run up to the holiday season is never brilliant for looking for flats) and ridiculous application processing requirements on the part of the estate agents has left us homeless.

I'm not sure how the application process works in the rest of the world, even in the UK as the situation never arose, but this is how it works in Western Australia.

We see a flat we like, and go to view the property. Many of the places we have been to see bare absolutely no resemblance to the photo's on the estate agents websites. In fact, some of the photos, you can easily tell, have been photo-shopped to make the property look bigger or brighter!

If we like the apartment, we will fill out the tediously long application form (most of which run to ten pages or more and ask for four separate references for each paying tenant).

This is where the process gets most ridiculous. In order for the agents to process the application, they require a weeks rent as a down payment. If the application is successful, the payment will be used as the first weeks rent. Fair enough. If the application is unsuccessful, the payment will be returned. On the surface, this seems absolutely fine, but the fact is that the agents will return the money in a cheque. This cheque takes up to three business days to go through and this is after the agents have taken up to two weeks to process the application.

The worst part of this is that if we find two places we like, we have to make a decision of which of the two places to go for because, if we apply for both, and are then accepted on both, one of the down payments will not be returned. I wish we could afford the risk of losing up to $450, I really do, but it really is just not possible!

So far we have had three applications rejected, and each time we have waited a week for the rejection and then had to start all over again.

Trying to remain positive in this situation becomes difficult at times, but we are trying, and hey, everything happens for a reason. Hopefully it will be one of these places

One can but dream!

Darren

P.S. I visited a friends house yesterday a little outside of Perth, and to be honest, I really loved the place. The houses interior was lovely, and the outside area exceptional. That's not to mention the little surprise in the back garden. I don't know if he will be reading this, but if he is... Please can I have your house. Pretty please, with vodka cherries!?!? And Lou wants your puppy!!

2 comments:

  1. It is terrible they make it so hard to rent a place. I hope you find something soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, Belle, they really do make it ridiculously hard to get a flat. Trying to keep positive about it though :0)

    Thank you :0)

    ReplyDelete

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