Hi all,

I live at indooroopilly, we are about to renew our lease, however in the mail today came a letter stating that from March the rent will increase by $20 per week
Thats a heck of a jump isn't it? I have been renting for several years, been saving hard for a house too. In the past my rent has only ever gone up by $5 per week.

My question is, are they allowed to do this by such a large amount?? I mean I know I can just leave but that isn't the point. How can they justify the extra $20? The letter wrote "To bring the property in line with market rent". I don't want to leave as I have a baby due in June and living on one wage isn't going to be easy.

Your advice is appreciated.

You're within your rights to object to the raise in rent, I'm not sure whether you have to do it directly to the owner or through the tenants authority or whatever the f*** it's called, either way I suggest you either take a look at the paperwork they gave you when you started your lease, they usually give you a pamphlet from the tenants authority when you start renting from someone. If not, I'm sure the info you can find will be on the authorities website, if only I could remember the name of the organisation...

i'd try objecting and see if they back down, then if the monmey really is an issue I'd look for another place and no sign a new lease.

They have every right to raise the rent to what ever they want after a contract has finished. It is very common for real-estate agents to raise the rent every couple of contract periods. They actually will hope you object and move out so that they can re-rent it to someone else and get their commission which is usually one or two weeks rent.
If you’re dealing directly with the landlord then you may be able to negotiate provided you have been a good payer in the past. If you’re dealing with a real-estate then it’s very unlikely you can negotiate anything.

i guess it all boils down to how good a tennant you are?

if you are worht the peace of mind, they mite not up the rent!

we are pretty happy with our owner (no real estate)

rent hasnt gone up in 4 years and it started cheap

largish queenslander in annerley for 230 a week? yes please! (sure there are lots of things wrong with the house, but we dont tell the owner about it and hes happy that we just keep paying our rent!)

oh, to pay $230 a week in rent for a house!

My question is, are they allowed to do this by such a large amount??

Once the lease is up, all bets are off and they can set any price they like. Right now it's up to you and your negotiating skillz. We had the same issue here but as my missus is a Rental manager she was able to talk the owner down the extra $20 bucks a week by offering to deal with the lessor directly and take the real estate agent out of the loop. (Of which saved the lessor the $20 bucks in Question)


last edited by C0deBasher at 20:04:43 15/Feb/06

rent money is dead money

rent money is dead money

maybe

but i dont mind paying for the convieniance

at our house, our rent was jacked up from 185 to 230 a week, at the end of the 6 month contract. we managed to convince them to drop it down to 210.

rent money is dead money

Yeah, but $230 a week is one heck of a lot less than a mortgage...plus owning a house means constant things need doing.

i used to work in real estate, and they are certainly allowed to do it, but it's not common to go up by more than $10. Call the agency and negotiate, they're always open to it. If you move out and the property stays vacant for one week, that's a few hundred bucks that the owners are losing, rather than the $10 a week less they'd get if they negotiated with you. if that makes sense.

also, the association thing is the Rental Tenancies Authority http://www.rta.qld.gov.au/

I live in indro and ours went up $15 a week, but thats cause we got Aircon installed in 2 more rooms.

what the.. $20 a week increase is chump change

in other words i don't think i've ever had a rent increase LESS than $20 per week

it seems that the owner can do whatever he wants, basically if he's asking too much then market forces will sort it out

maybe

but i dont mind paying for the convieniance

I don't see the conveniance of paying someone else's home off with my hard earned money ? If I'm going to pay something off, it should be going to me in the end, just my opinion.

Yeah, but $230 a week is one heck of a lot less than a mortgage...plus owning a house means constant things need doing.

Based off 2 working incomes I'd say its easily possible - 1 may be pushing it depends on your situation. House Maintenance is always going to be there.

Last 18 months rents have gone up heaps in areas, to help justify the stopid money ppl have paid for some properties. So a increase from 5 to 50 bucks can be possible. Its all relative to how much your rent was before compared to the market. So if you were on a good wicket before, you may be up for a huge increase now to get you to market rent.

Apart from nego a little, and if that doesn't work, all you can do is move out. They can jack the rent up as much as they want.

And if you did what codebashers woman did, and if I were they Agent, id go out of my way to make it painfull for the tenant for as long as my memory of them trying to lose my business lasted. And I can think of many ways :P

http://www.rta.qld.gov.au/faq_during_a_tenancy.cfm?item=114.00

I don't see the conveniance of paying someone else's home off with my hard earned money ? If I'm going to pay something off, it should be going to me in the end, just my opinion.

if i wanna buy where i live now it was cost me a fortune (i couldnt afford it)

id rather pay cheap rent and live awesomely close to work, my friends, my sport, my party zone

not interested in paying off my house if i have to live in the boonies

lifestyle yo

so wheres your house skitza?
what suburb have you bought in?

we are looking to buy a house right now (after a few years saving HEAPS because of our cheap rent, its ugly out there, $350k doesnt buy u much where i wanna live)

last edited by Spook at 07:46:57 16/Feb/06

onmg jubblies! msn me tungj0r at hotmail dot com :D :D :D

“Rent money is dead money”. No it’s not. In most cases especially with young home owners renting would be financially wiser.

Look at it this way –

If (interest on a mortgage) + (rates) + (all other costs of ownership) – (property inflation) > (rent) then having a mortgage would be a waste of money and renting would be wiser. Provided you put away money each week that was equivalent to what you would have been paying in principle then you would be better off.

Yeh, the property boom really f***ed things up in this country and created a 'property apartheid'.

Instead of going up gradually every yr (8-10%) alot of places either doubled or tripled in 2 yrs!

I blame the Howard Govt. Their lack of foresight has put our economy one interest rate percentage away from a recession.

lol

Like we are really close to a recession.

I agree that property is completely overpriced in this country.

This may also help:

http://www.rta.qld.gov.au/paying_the_rent.cfm

Nah Bad our rent would have gone up anyway. In actual fact our owner is pretty cool for not asking for a $25 increase.

CPI is say 4% (dec04 to dec05 the housing CPI was 3.6% nationally, and acording to the ABS Brisbane is above average for CPI increase *shrug*) that means everything in theory should be 4% more expensive from year to year.

Just say rent is $370 ... $370 * 0.04 = 14.8

If your rent goes up by less then CPI you win!
If it goes up by more, then something is wrong.

Not to mention the owners costs go up eg. rates go up, and the value of the property goes up.

Since I have been renting I have never seen the rent not go up at the end of a lease/renewing a lease. And almost always by CPI give or take a little bit. The worst rent raise was $20 a week on a 220 a week rent.

Based off 2 working incomes I'd say its easily possible - 1 may be pushing it depends on your situation. House Maintenance is always going to be there.

Oh yes it is definitely possible of course; I bought a house 12 months ago. Nonetheless owning your own house costs a lot - $1200/fn mortgage is a heck of a lot more than $230 a wk rent - plus rates, insurance, maintenance etc is all very costly and can also be time consuming. Not everyone wants that committment, and fair enough.

I just disagreed with the broadness of your statement 'rent money is dead money'. I think that in many cases it isn't.

Ryan who do you rent through?

Does anyone else here think that we were all better off b4 the boom?

Thats renters and property owners?

I mean I think the cost of property and rents really drives up the cost of living ... petrol also.

It seems only a small percentage of ppl really benefitted from the boom i.e pre-boom property investors. Yet the rest of us and probably our kids are in for many decades of being locked out of the market. Not to mention exposure to excessive, financially crippling rents and more homeless ppl.

Well for some people to win big in the market, a whole bunch of others have to lose. So yeah.

Its the same as the stock market, a select few make the most money, and the average person generally buys at the top of the market and gets screwed. Such as life..........


Also people that talk about the future and people not being able to afford to buy. They are on drugs..... The market price is set by what people are willing to pay. If the majority of people cannot afford or banks wont lend them the money the price of the market will fall untill it reaches what people can afford to pay.

Slaps its mroe complicated then that. ps Reserve Bank controls interest rates not the Government.

And there is lots of reasons/excuses. We had skilled labour shortage. Our interest rates were low (for us, by world standards they weren't). The government was giving people 7 to 14 grand to buy houses, (and money to have babies). And housing prices had been moving to slowly for about 10 years before that.

But now its just rediculous. We have an abundance of land, but land prices are still high, and building is expensive.

Persoanlly we need an interest rate rise to kill the "investor" market.

As a country our housing is more unaffordable then the UK, America and Canada,
An interesting if depressing read(pdf)

Personally speaking Obes will get his rate rise in time and the cycle of love will continue. As it always has for many many many years....

the investor market should sort itself out when all the baby boomers die

pfft, theres gonna be a major drop in the next 12-24 months.

Well I don't want a rate rise cause my repayments are already enough thank you very much.

I agree partly with wat u r saying jubs. But shares are just money on paper. I think ppl have forgotten that a house is there to provide shelter etc its not there just to make money.

Hence why many ppl forced to apply to the Housing Commission have to wait like 5+ yrs now just for a crummy unit in a slum.

I agree slap also. But at the end of the day, its also about money/profit and thats the driving force for most things in the world.


Orb I'm sure you will make it through a rate rise, but there are many people who have borrowed way too much money. And even though they have been warned that in future their may be a rise, they borrowed to the max and are struggling now. You also had no choice, as you got a hot wife, and you need to do these things to keep them :)

Yeh poor Orbs .. under the thumb to a hot wife.

** jealous **

You also had no choice, as you got a hot wife, and you need to do these things to keep them :)

Heh, well to be honest there's no way I'd go back to renting after the experiences we had with arsehole agents.

It was crazy how much money the banks were willing to lend us hey...I can see how people could easily over-extend themselves, particularly on investment properties. We didn't want to borrow anywhere near our limit, oweing that much money would make me feel queasy!

Its going to be double worse for some people.

Like they owned a property by mere fluke before the market went up and they borrowed against that property to buy an investment property. And they picked out something they thought was a good investment, because they are an investment guru, due to them making money on their first property.

So they now owe a lot of money. A heap of them also bought cars included in their loans. So if property prices drop a little and rates go up a little, they are stuffed. These are also just normal people, with normal jobs, so if repayments are more then they earn, they are in trouble, as there is not some mystery pool of money they can tap into.

thats when they have to sell the 2nd home, pay capital gains, and get screwed :(

See they won't have to worry about cap tax cause they will prolly be selling it for less then they paid for it + the in and out costs, so they will be left with a -

Dont let that happen to you tung :P You don't want the little tungs growing up in the rain :)

hrm, but if the rates are going up in line with interest rate and house prices (youd safely assume?)

What I said tung cant happen to you, because you dont own a place yet.

You will be buying at a time that the market is prolly moving fairly slow, compared to the people that I'm talking about that already owned and bought more property in the boom.

I think thats what your talking about, but I'm not sure :P

oh yeah

i getchya

soz, had my things out of sync. they bought first house before boom, bought 2nd house at peak of boom, have to sell 2nd house for cheap to me, who buys it before boom and i win!

Tugs I rent through Arthur Conias at Toowong.

I rang the property manager today, she was sympathetic as she is in the same situation as me (baby, one wage etc...) so she said she will talk to the owners for me. (I asked for owners details can't give them out)

oh, to pay $230 a week in rent for a house!

I hear that man!

Though i live with a spanish girl and a south african girl, so it makes up for it.

Don't know much about how it relates to renting, but generally with any contract, once it expires, if there are no clauses that govern the renewal process, then either party can pretty much ask for what they like. You could turn around to the leasor and say you are not going to renew at any more than $10 less than what you are currently paying, similarly they might say they will not renew for less than $50 more than what you are currently paying and your first born child as a slave.

If this concerns you, you could always insist that the lease agreement specifies that when the agreement expires, it can be renewed by either party for another term or two (implicitly this means renewed at the same terms, ie no price hike). This gives you the right to, at the end of the first lease period, force the owner to lease to you for another period at the current price. Win for you if the market goes up. But it also gives the owner the right to force you to continue to lease his property at the current price, even if you don't want to anymore. Lose for you if the market drops, or if you want to move somewhere else.

Of course, if you are thinking of messing around with contracts like this, see a real lawyer.