Housing Crisis

Let me preface this by stating that the rental housing market in Perth is terrible.  By terrible I mean:


-the prices are outrageous
-the houses are generally either run down pieces of crap or executive mansions
-there is a tonne of competition even for the run down pieces of crap
-for the privilege to view a house you have to practically beg the realtor, more often than not a 25 year fresh out of their parents basement, who, if they are inclined to return your call, may set up a viewing between the hours of 11am-3:30pm Monday to Friday
-when setting up the viewing you generally have 15 minutes to look at the house and then get out, sometimes even less (there was one 'home open' from 4:35-4:40)

So, when I say terrible I mean ridiculous, overpriced, frustrating and generally a rip-off.

You may be asking, "but why are you having to move in the first place?"  Good question although it's really none of your business and frankly, a little rude.  The house we are currently in is okay.  The living space isn't very good, the outdoor space is essentially useless (albeit beautiful), it's freezing in the winter and it's costs a lot more than it's worth.  We basically took it because the market was so bad at the time.  Little did we know...

So, about a month or so ago we starting looking for a new rental property to live in.  The criteria was that it had to be within relatively easy access to the kids school, have 4 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, preferably a pool and, of course, within our price range.  There are two pretty good websites in Perth that are generally updated in a timely manner.  We were scouring those websites every day and sometimes several times a day to see what was available on the market.  There were actually quite a few decent properties listed and we went to see a few of them.  However, almost all of them were available immediately.  Because our lease doesn't expire until Nov.1, if we found a place we would likely have to pay for two rents for a few weeks.  One is bad enough but two means we don't eat for a few weeks. 

The good news was that every week there were some decent properties coming on the market.  There were even a couple very nice ones that we were interested in that had been sitting available for a couple of weeks.  So, we thought that we would be okay.  We were mistaken.

When we came back from our recent trip to Dunsborough we began to ramp up our level of house hunting activities.  Then, last Tuesday October 16 Nadia went to the American Women's Club coffee party.  While there she just happened to meet a Canadian lady who just happened to be trying to find someone to take over her rent in what happened to be our favorite neighborhood.  Surely, this was fate.  That night we went to see their home.  It was a beautiful, huge, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom home complete with salt-water pool, a pool table, a 5 minute walk to the train station and a 10 minute walk to the school.  The only problem was that it was at the very top of our price range.  Regardless, we thought that we couldn't pass up the opportunity and told them that we'd take it.  They contacted the owner who insisted that it all be done by the realtor.  In the meantime, we had a plan B property in mind that was quite nice.  This past Monday the current tenants called us and said that there might be a snag.  The owners are considering putting it on the market at a higher rate.  We told them if that was the case that we weren't interested and we proceeded to put in an offer on the plan B house.  The day we put in our offer was the day someone elses offer, put in previously, was accepted.  Apparently, there were 9 offers on the property!  And as it turns out that was the week that there were no new properties coming on the market.  Every other week there were some decent options but they were all available 'now' so we couldn't really consider them.  Then we were told that the owners of the property where the Canadian family lived were considering our offer.  There was hope. However, that week the internet completely dried up of any new houses.  The week we needed there to be some decent listings there were none.

So, the prospect of homelessness was staring us in the face like a drunk hobo screaming "get out of my cardboard box!"  We began frantically looking for:

-short term temporary accomodation
-rental facility for our furniture, etc.
-a moving truck big enough for 5 people to live in

Then on Thursday of this week (keep in mind we are moving out on Thursday, Nov.1) a couple new properties came on the market.  We arranged a viewing that day at one of them and put in an offer a couple of hours later.  We were told that we were the first to see the home and therefore we surmised that we were also likely the first to put in an offer.  The only caveat on the home is that it was listed as being available on Nov.2 while we needed it Nov.1, but the realtor said that that might be an option.  So, yesterday (Friday) I called to check on the status of our application and I discovered that there were two other applicants and they were going through all of the details and references in the application.  The soonest we'll know about the property is on Monday, Oct.29 aka t-minus 3 days before homelessness.  At the moment we are completely helpless.  To make matters worse, we were informed that the owners of the property where the Canadians are living decided to put it up for sale, so renting it was no longer an option. Now that it's Saturday here we can't even go look at other properties because the realtors are at the beach working on their tans on the weekends.  I'm fairly certain that they get their realtor licenses at the bottom of a box of breakfast cereal.

I repeat: the rental market here is ridiculous, overpriced, frustrating and generally a rip-off.

So, the worst case scenario is that we aren't afforded the privilege of paying $850 per week to live in a less-than-ideal home.  In which case, unless a miracle property appears out of nowhere, we will be looking for temporary accommodation, storing our goods, and experiencing additional frustrations with this rental market while working full-time and trying to squeeze in a home viewing whenever possible.

The one thing that is certain: we will not be living in our current address after Nov.1.  Regardless of what happens, we will have very limited internet access for a certain period of time (hooray, another relatively simple task that becomes a crappy frustrating protocol we have to jump hoops through to accomplish!)  Ugh.

Regards,

The Klamers of no fixed address