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This blog explains how buying, building or renting a house works in Australia. It makes an interesting reading for newbies and outsiders, expats and newcomers, basically anyone who is not familiar with Australian real estate market.

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Finding a rental is a tough job these days. The demand is high, the supply is low and quite often it takes a lot of time to find a suitable house in the area that you want with an affordable rent.

And when you finally find a place to live, it is so natural to be thinking about moving in, instead of concentrating on the formalities, isn’t it? This is why many people just come in the real estate agency, bring the bond money, pay a month of rent up front, sign the contract and walk away happy. Did you see anything wrong with my last sentence?

Read it again. It says “sign the contract”. It doesn’t say “read the contract and then sign the contract”. Rental agreement is a very important document and yet most people don’t read it, they listen to what the agent explains about the contract, but the document itself is long and boring, so why bother.

Let me give you 5 reasons why you should read the rental agreement.

1. Real estate agents are people and people make mistakes. I have rented 3 different houses and in every contract they gave me to sign, there were mistakes - in dates, in amounts, in various details.

If they put the wrong commencement date, you can end up paying rent for longer than you should. If they put the wrong amount, you can pay more than was advertised.

If they spell your name incorrectly it can backfire in all kinds of ways, including you not getting your rent assistance money from the government.

2. Rent is normally due on a certain date of the month. If you don’t read your contract, you don’t know when that date is. You don’t know when that date is - you miss a payment, and if you miss a payment, expect trouble.

3. Although the contracts are mostly standard, some landlords insist on adding specific paragraphs about what the tenants can’t do. If you don’t read the agreement, you can affix an antenna on the roof only to receive a phone call from the agency kindly asking you to remove the bloody thing ASAP.

4. If there is a special condition you’ve negotiated with the landlord (such as keeping a pet in the rental property), you would want to check that it was added to the contract. As I already said, these contract are standard and any additions can be left out and forgotten.

5. You can assume that certain things are landlord’s responsibility when they are really yours - and the contract says so. For example, changing light globes, replacing batteries in smoke detectors or dealing with pests may seem like something the owner of the house need to take care of, but according to most contracts those are tenants’ responsibility.

The same applies to garden maintenance. You may think: “So what if I’m renting a place with a garden, does it make me a gardener?”. The answer is “No, but you still need to water the trees and to mow the lawn”.

As you can see, there are enough reasons why you want to read the rental agreement - and to pay attention as well while you’re at it.

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