[CjChris]

Please tolerate a little vent here :o (or look the other way).

My daughters are trying to find a reasonably priced rental in Wellington City, and for several days now we've been stalking Trade Me, the newspapers, real estate websites....and we're no closer to finding anything now than we were when we started.

It's so hard to understand how they can have a chance at a place when the customary way of doing things here is to hold an open home at a set time and everyone interested shows up all at once. We have looked at some places that real estates were handling, and the policy there seems to be "whoever gets the application filled out and turned in at the office first" wins the first option on the place (assuming credit checks and police checks, etc., come back ok). When a private owner shows a place, they just choose who they want out of all the people who show up and fill out an interest form.

Yes, they have the right to choose who they want, but I've had two landlords tell us this week that it was hard to choose someone out of all those interested so they flipped a coin to decide! Whether they were joking or serious, I don't know. Another told me that 50 people responded to her ad on Trade Me, and when the people were viewing the place they were trying to outbid each other to get the place (which was priced low to begin with).
:uhoh

We have looked at two places this week that were so filthy that I couldn't believe we were all allowed to go inside...underwear, beer bottles, dirty dishes, old food...you name it, we stepped over it. The agent was very embarrassed, but tried to encourage us by saying, "invision it clean with your belongings inside." The smell was awful.

This whole process is really frustrating; I'm wondering how in the world anyone gets lucky enough to get a good place in a city where properties are in such high demand without paying an arm and a leg!

Ok..vent over.
Thank you.

:exit

[LesleyS]

We can sooooooooo sympathise with you there Cj Chris...., in our earlier searches for a decent family place to rent we were also shown a property by a very well dressed lady who arrived in a very expensive motor.

She looked us up and down, glanced over our shoulders at the type of vehicle we had arrived in and proceeded to show us around.

Oh my God.....! Despite the fact that she had pre warned the existing tenants that we would be coming the place was a total pig sty - plates of old food shoved under beds, curtains drawn, piles of washing - that's dishes and clothes, and a very bad odour coming from virtually every room in the house! :no
She didn't look the slightest bit embarassed, indeed she went on to say she would only consider us if our references were top notch! :eek:

Hope you have some luck soon my friend! :yes :

[sizzlingbadger]

It's a bad time of year for renting with the new uni term starting again soon, hopefully something will come up soon.

Keep on the agents back so you end up being called first when new houses come on to the market. It may be a good idea to carry references, police checks and the cheque book so as soon as something comes up they can hand over the bond so not to lose it.

:laugh Made me laugh about the underwear, dirty plates and generally untidy comments, we viewed houses to buy looking like that before :uhoh

[CjChris]

Looked at three more today (at least two of them were tidy--the one that was not was still occupied by a sleepy young man and his girl friend--the viewing was a noon :o ).

Put applications in on the two tidy ones, so we'll see if anything comes of it. I'm just not sure how one gets to be the "the lucky candidate" when so many people are filling out applications, too...geeze..

It's like getting a lotto ticket and crossing fingers...;)

[SarahEDH]

hi Christine -- am guessing your daughters are pretty sure they want to live in the city, but . . . if they looked at places farther out that have a train station, say in Lower Hutt, they might find it a reasonable second choice. I think it takes less than 15 minutes to get into the city from there, and Lower Hutt itself is chockful of retail and any services you'd need.

Have to share another cultural dissonance moment -- when I was looking for Welly housing I talked to a landlord whose American tenants were moving out in order to go back to the US. He was very keen to rent me the house (he liked Americans 'cause we pay on time and don't tear things up, according to him) and wanted me to move in on the same day they left. I asked him when he planned to have the house cleaned since the prior tenants had kids, a dog, etc. (Nothing against the mum & dad -- I wouldn't expect anyone to clean their rental on the day they move out.) Landlord was shocked that I would even ask such a thing -- apparently "nobody expects a house to be clean when they get it". Que? I didn't pursue it any further :exit
I look back now and laugh, but at the time it wasn't funny . . .

Hope your daughters find the right place soon --

[ellenmelon]

such is the way this time of year unfortunately :( too many people looking with not enough places available.
what kind of price range are you looking at? how many rooms? PM me and i might be able to pass on your info to my landlord. no promises!

[CjChris]

Thanks for the commiseration. We knew this was a bad time to find them a place, but our lease just happens to be ending soon at our current rental, and as OH and I are moving to Tauranga for my job, the girls need a smaller, cheaper place here in Welly than the one where we are now living.

It's easy to find something without so much competition when you are looking in the 400-600 pw range; it's the 300-400 range that gets snapped up so fast (of course).

It still blows my mind that rent is so high...I'm used to paying a few hundred a month rather than per week! :(

We have looked at places in Kelburn, Northland, Newtown, Mt. Vic, Karori, and Thorndon....Lower Hutt and farther out would appeal except that the youngest starts Vic U next month and the other will work as junior chef in the city. They do not have a car and probably won't have one for some time, so they will be walking and using public transport to get around.

Thanks, ellenmellon, for offering to pass info along to your landlord. I've PM'd you :yes

Maybe they'll luck out at one of the open homes they are attending this weekend. Fingers and toes crossed! :nice1

[Wahlet]

Following the comment that this is a bad time of year to find a rental...

We should be arriving in Welly and looking for rentals in June and early July. Is that an okay time of year to be looking?

[Chiba]

At least if you're looking in June/July you'll be able to spot the zero sun, colder than a fridge, wind trap places...

[Wahlet]

Ha! good point.

[CjChris]

Ok, so now I guess I'm supposed to eat my hat or something! :p

After all my whining and complaining, the girls got a fabby place!!
:raebanana

On Thursday we looked at three places; one scary and two nice. I helped the girls fill out an application on the spot at one of the nice ones. I really felt we had done a rushed, crap job at filling in all the questions. I mean, people were walking around us trying to look at the place, and the girls and I were holed up in the bedroom trying to get the application filled in (the agent told us to "go for it.")

I really was just tired and aggravated about it all, but thought, What the hey, maybe we'll be the first ones to hand over a completed application.

Ta-da...we were!! (or maybe the property manager sensed our desperation?:p )

The property manager called me Friday (while I was out of town, then I couldn't reach him all weekend, and I fretted about it constantly!)

Today, however, I learned that THE GIRLS GOT IT. I am sooo thrilled!

So, my apologies for all the whining, and special thanks to all who sent well wishes and empathy (and special thanks ellenmellon for the offer to help).

What's weird is that recently I complained to Sam B that the weather has been awful here in Welly, and since then, the weather has been the best all summer!

Maybe I need to start complaining about being overworked and underpaid, huh?

:laugh

[tigerlily]

That's great news!

I feel really lucky that I found a place for us with just a couple of days looking. Actually, I took the first place we looked at- mind you it was on the high end of what we can afford, so not cheap. But does have central heating! So my mother in law will actually be able to come visit in winter. Others viewed and were interested, I was surprised be picked us because we have 2 little kids (and um, no job in Wellington!) but I think we were the most flexible (he was moving out of the country) said we could take it as soon as he needed or could wait. And we were willing to do a 1 year lease. My impression was being long term renters and flexible made the difference, because it wasn't our references. He never called them.

[CjChris]

My references were not called either. And I didn't even have my passport on me to put my number down, plus there were a couple other questions on there that I couldn't answer at the moment because I didn't have the info with me, so I wrote "can supply" in the margin. :o

I reallllly thought we didn't stand a chance because of how things had gone for two weeks!! It probably helped that I put the application in my name along with my girls as flatmates. They are 23 and 19 and I had started thinking people were shying away from their applications because of their age. However, I did tell the agent that I will be working in Tauranga and when I visit the girls in Welly, I'll be staying with them at the apartment; apparently this was suffiencient enough because the property manager later commented that my "daughters will have a safe place to live" while I'm away working.

Sigh of relief. Whew.:D

Now we need to start searching Trade Me for used whiteware for them, then get us all moved over the next two weeks! :uhoh

(For anyone interested in knowing, it is costing OH and me over $3300.00 to move from Welly to Papamoa Beach, and we're hoping we can move the girls ourselves since it's only a few km's away from where we are now.)

[Smiler]

That's good news Christine! :raebanana

You must feel much happier moving and leaving the girls settled in their own plce. :nice1

[ellenmelon]

aww shucks. no worries! :D always happy to help. we're currently renting our fridge and washer for 25 dollars a month so if you have trouble finding something that could be an option?
im glad they got somewhere as the morning you PM'd me I looked out the window and the landlord was showing people the houses that were free! And someones moving in right now (quick huh?!) :)

[talisker]

If you're looking for a place to rent with the intention of buying somewhere in the not too distant future, I would start speaking to an agent or two about buying and go and look at some houses with them. Once they know you're a potential source of commission to them in the future, I suspect their willingness to help you get a short term rental may also increase (particularly in the current market)