Living Arrangements

When we first arrived our plan was to search the sites that we had found in the states, mainly realestate.com.au and rentalexpress.com.au. When searching these sites we noticed that almost every posting was put up by a property management company. We decided to catch the bus and make an appearance at some of the property managers to see where we stand in the market with our unique situation. We were well prepared with a packet of information including resumes, copies of ID, bank statements and reference letters since we really had no identity in this country. Most people were impressed with our organization, and believed we shouldn’t have a hard time finding a property. As we put in our first application to a property, they told us that we were too late, as the office opened at 9am and we didn’t show up until 2pm. This was quite a shock and we started to ask questions about how things are done here in Queensland. They advised us that it is a race, more than a qualification. From here on out we always had applications pre-filled out before we went to the property inspection. They look highly upon the “first come, first served” rule, so to have our application turned in immediately is a huge advantage, and it seems almost a requirement. This brings me to property inspections.

A property inspection is a competition, and I suppose they can do it this way because the rental market is so heavily flooded. Someone told us that over 1000 people move to Brisbane each week. When we find a property, we would call about it because we would like to have a look. They would tell us when the property inspection was, usually a Saturday, and the inspection usually last 10-15 minutes. We would hurry down to the inspection, and if it was a nice place there would usually be about 15-20 other people there, also with applications in hand. It was quite a competition, and since we were unemployed we ended up not even turning in applications for some of the nicer flats.

When you finally get a flat, it doesn’t have any “white goods”, which means there is no refrigerator, washing machine or clothes dryer. Almost every house has a large basin in the bathroom or garage which is meant for hand washing clothes, as far as I can tell no one uses them. It seemed very strange to have to purchase a refrigerator, but we asked our property managers about used appliances, and we met some nice blokes who delivered a fridge and washer the next day. The average fridge here is much smaller than back home, with the larger ones having a 300 litre capacity.

Utilities are different depending on the suburb you are in, but as in the states there are a few main companies who provide them. Water is provided by the landlord and tenants do not have to pay for it. There is some magical number, and if we exceed our water usage for the fortnight (two weeks) then we can be charged for the excess amount. Electricity usually comes from a company called Energex, but as we haven’t received our first bill yet we don’t know how expensive it might be. I have included a picture of our outlets here, and as you can see every outlet in Queensland has a switch on it, to save electricity. Our water heater is run by gas, and we have two large propane cylinders on the side of our house to run them. This propane is supplied by SupaGas, and we only pay for gas when we need to have a bottle refilled. The phone infrastructure in Australia was government owned until about a year ago, when the government decided that it would promote technology advance to privatize the phone system. Telstra now owns 99% of the infrastructure, so most people have their phone through Telstra. Telstra is required to rent the lines to other companies, but usually the other companies are more expensive since they have to pay Telstra. Most homes do not have coax cable run to them (standard TV cable) but instead the free stations come through the air onto your antenna. Every house has a large antenna on top, and the house is wired with outlets to plug in to the antenna. We get 5 free channels, but the reception and picture is very good. Because there is no coax cable, most people get their internet through ADSL, over the phone line. This connection isn’t quite as good as back home, but it works well enough for Skype and YouTube. The other strange thing about internet here is that you purchase bandwidth, instead of monthly tenancy. We decided to purchase 15GB of bandwidth per month, which includes another 15GB of “off-peak” usage, between 2am and noon. Hopefully this will be enough bandwidth, but I am not sure as I have never monitored it before. If we go over our quota, they reduce our connection speeds to very very slow, but at least we don’t get charged any extra fees. Our internet is provided through a company called iiNet, who has cheaper prices because we aren’t required to “rent” the telephone line, as they pay for the line rental and we use a Voice over IP phone.

The bathrooms here are very small, and they don’t really believe in counter space in bathrooms. Most houses have 2-3 bedrooms and only one bathroom. We even saw a few 4 bedroom houses with one small bathroom. If a house has a second bathroom it is usually an ensuite, which means a bathroom in the master bedroom. This bathroom is even smaller, with a pedestal sink, toilet, and small square shower tightly packed together. Most ensuites that we have seen have this pedestal sink with literally no counter space, no medicine cabinet, zero shelves of any sort, and no towel rack. Seems to me that this makes a bathroom virtually useless. Strange.

Rent and other bills are paid weekly here, usually be a system called BPay which every bank has. BPay is simply BillPay, or direct debit so that you don’t have to send a check in the mail. Some companies such as our property managers allow us to pay fortnightly (two weeks) to reduce the overhead on everyone.