cost of utilities

Hi, moving to Sydney March/April... what is the base cost of utilities, internet and cable TV?

And when renting are water and council tax (or AU equivalent) covered within the rental price, I understand this is the case?

Thanks

Michael.

Yes, rates (water and council) are covered in rent. It's like the system in the UK pre-council tax and water privatisation.

Internet, depends on where you live in terms of what utilities are in the street. In Sydney currently NBN (national broadband network, fibre optic in street) is uncommon, Telstra (equiv of BT) cable common, Optus cable somewhere in the middle. Areas without cable only have the choice of ADSL over copper phone lines. You can get bundle phone/internet deals, our pretty much unlimited calls incl international and internet over Telstra cable is $99 a month, but I could probably do a bit better if I cared enough to shop around.

You may want pay TV and this can affect the choice. We have Foxtel for about the same again, it's not great value but there are some channels and programs that are only carried on it. It's carried through the Telstra network, hence our choice of telco provider. Optus also do pay TV and Telstra do their own or there's an increasing choice of internet services like Netflix and so on, depends what you like to watch. Or you can do without, there's also free to air digital terrestrial just like in the UK, fewer channels though.

Peoples' gas and electricity bills vary widely so hard to give you a guide on that one. In a big draughty house they can be painful, in a more modest, better insulated place or if you can live without caning the aircon (if you have it) and heating in winter it can be much cheaper.

For what it's worth, we have no gas in our street, only electric so that does everything for us. It's about $200 a month, our usage is high (wife at home most days and she likes the aircon, we do lots of washing, have pool pumps etc) but our 4/5 bed house is decently designed and insulated - the best of the 3 we've lived in - and we put a 4.5kw solar plant on the roof which cuts our bills by about 40%

You do need to heat your house in winter BTW. It gets quite chilly at times from May to August

Hi Im in QLD but as a guide for you we pay $130 a month, for landline phone package (free lcal calls, cheap UK call etc), internet and a Telstra box that gives us Netflix and other channels.

I havent been involved in rentals for a few years but it seems to be the norm here that standard water charges and rates are paid by the owner, you are liable for excess water costs though.

Hope someone in Sydney will be along soon with figures for there, as i believe its mosre expensive than QLD.

Cal x

It is becoming more common to have to pay all water usage and often the supply too here in Adelaide. Although all the sewerage costs are met by the landlord. This means that your bill will be less than it would be if you owned the property.

We pay $115 per month for Optus in the Adelaide hills we get unlimited NBN, cheap international calls and Optus fetch TV for that with all the UK football ( not that I watch it). Suits us as we don't watch Aussie sport and use a VPN to watch UK TV, or fire up Netflix when nothing on here. Not worth the Foxtel fees for us.

Our bills in a modern but poorly insulated house near the city were very high for what we used and we needed the aircon as the living area upstairs got very hot. Now in our own home which we built with extra insulation and double glazing the bills are much better!

We're in Sydney. I can't lay my hands on our latest phone bill, but from memory we pay about $135 per month for phone, an international package, and the internet. We're pretty heavy users of the internet (we don't get TV reception here, so we stream our TV), and I think that is for 500GB of data. We've never had to pay extra for going over that. Electricity costs us about $650 a quarter, we have a 3kW solar panel system on our roof and we also have a solar hot water system both of which reduced our bills by quite a bit. However, the electricity prices have been rising steadily. We are semi-careful with our electricity, but we have a pool pump and also a large fish tank, both of which are fairly energy hungry. We did see a drop in costs when we had our new kitchen fitted (more efficient appliances), and it is a bit cheaper in the summer than in the winter, as we don't use air conditioning, plus the water system doesn't need topping up (our solar system has an electricity back up if the water doesn't get hot enough). In the winter we have the additional cost of buying firewood, which we need to heat our house (poorly insulated, just one wood burning stove to heat the whole house). I think that costs $250-ish per load, and we probably get through 4 loads a winter (our house gets pretty cold in the winter).

I hope that helps a bit.