Anyone living in Melbourne couldn’t have escaped the mountain of stories on the rental crisis. From what I’ve read it’s similar in Sydney too – massive rental demand, no rental properties and sky rocketing costs. Of course no one can afford to buy or build which makes the situation even more stressful. Even though our rent went up six months ago we’ve been okay but that certainly changed today.
We received a letter from our landlord telling us our rent is going up 9.5%. Crap, that’s a lot. We’d thought another rise was on the way but had a figure closer t0 5% in mind. He listed every reason under the sun as to why he’s putting the price up but it all boils down to ‘because I can’. Which is fair enough for him, it’s his house and investment, but it sucks for us. The one good thing is he is resisting his wife’s overtures to sell and sell quickly; to find a place now would be a nightmare so we are just going to have to grin and bear it.
We’re incredibly pleased we’ve progressed as far as we have to securing our own place – it’s good to know this should be the last time we have to take a hit like this for someone else’s benefit. If we hadn’t have already taken the steps we have we’d probably be rushing out the door right now to start looking and even though we’ll be paying more with this rise we’re taking steps to ensure we spend a lot less – we want our own place and we want it quick.
Hopefully 9.5% over the next 12 months or so (?) until you move doesn’t make a huge amount of difference in the grand scheme of things. Just be thankful you have an escape route. And if his wife is trying to convince him to sell, locking in a 12 month lease may help you ensure that doesn’t happen too soon.
Not a bad idea to lock in a lease. So long as you can afford it, the sacrifice to get into your own home will be forgotten soon enough, assuming things continue as they have for the last thirty years.
I should have explained – he is not happy with his wife and, as he wrote in the letter to us, it is his intention to move back some time in the next 10 years. We assume this means when his kids are old enough he’ll leave his wife and bolt back to his home. According to him his wife “forced” him to move an hours drive away and he genuinely sounds miserable.
This works to our favour – we know that he won’t sell because he needs the house. This also means that if we put up with this rise we know we won’t have to move until we want to. It’s a medium price to pay for a bit of security until we move to our own place.