Relocation agent to find rental?

[Gaskit]

Hello,

We are soon joining the long list of POMZ looking for rentals in Melbourne! We are moving over there in June.

We are looking for that ''ideal house'' about 30mins from CBD with a little bit of space outside and in a nice area , children friendly!

I was just wondering whether getting a relocation agent on board would make a significant difference in finding these properties or in your experience are we just better off looking on realestate and domains website? How easy is it to get a feel for the area? Would be interested to know how the POMZ already there have found their property ? and did they find the right one first time??

thanks in advance for your help ,

[Guest shusselmann]

Hi,

We moved to Sydney just over a year ago and looked at a few relocation consultant websites but couldn't justify the cost. If you are relocating with work and your employer will pay, that's a different matter :-)

 

We booked a short term holiday let in an area we liked the look of through Internet research (we used rentahome to find that property). We stayed in that property for six weeks and used the time to get to know the surrounding area and look at more permenant rental properties.

 

Rental contracts don't generally get signed a month in advance here (like the UK) so I think you'll always find it's better to be here in person and look at the properties yourself. In our experience in Sydney, properties tend to have open days a week or so before the current tenants move out, if you like the property you submit an application to the agent on the day. You need all your references and proof of employment ready to hand over. In popular areas you need to act quickly to secure a property and you need your application to stand out i.e. prove that you're good tenants.

 

In the end, our Internet research proved to be good, we loved the area we stayed in initialy, but couldn't afford it! We've moved about ten minutes away. We looked in or outside about 40 properties before we found what we wanted.

 

Good luck!!