Rental Rant

Just back from another week at the coalface of the Sydney rental market and I can’t tell you what a relief it is not to have to Google Domain tomorrow, or Monday as I have learnt. Agents live out Monday and Tuesday in a semi intoxicated semi hung-over bubble of euphoria as they reminisce about the bathtub, and the Bollinger at Madam Fifi’s Saturday night courtesy of all those crisp hundred dollar bills they found in the tenancy applications earlier that day. By Wednesday realising that they must work to generate a similar result next weekend they begin to erase some of the rented sites from Domain and put leased stickers on the ads in their shop windows which then hang decaying like hunter’s trophy foxes on a barb wire fence. Then they labour at composing and posting new lettings that appear meagre and mysterious like mushrooms in compost. Some of the more heavily addicted will spring a short notice inspection on Wednesday or even Friday to get the monkey off their back but most are content with the weekly pattern of Saturday inspections followed by a early close to count and divvy the loot. What few of them do though is answer your email’d plea for information about inspection times, and none would dream of affording the courtesy of calling you direct on the mobile number you provided.

From a punters viewpoint a cycle that commences no sooner than Wednesday searching for green stars indicating new listings or grieving over lost opportunities when logging on at six pm they find they have narrowly missed a five fifteen to five twenty five viewing. Saturday is do or die and they must be emotionally spiritually and economically prepared for the fray. They must also be prepared for crowds the likes of which one is more used to experiencing during changeover at the local multiplex. They must also carry files of arcane information such as car registration, passport numbers, water rate bills and birth certificates and preferably have their solicitors and accountants at hand, for the writers cramp inducing, thirty minutes of application form filling fun. I always have difficulty resisting temptation to answer the length of lease question with a sensible ninety nine years. It’s important nonetheless to take into account these thirty minutes when programming this day when viewings at Leichhardt, Lewisham and Newtown may all be from twelve thirty to twelve forty five followed by Marrickville at one to one fifteen. How I pity those without cars who must employ a taxi for half a day or more, adding another expense to what will probably be a worthless day. Pity help those older folk who have failed to embrace the age of internet, to-let adds are no longer a feature of daily newspapers and they will surely soon be on the street.

Meanwhile, as some you may have deduced, this is not the product of a researched and professionally verifiable thesis, rather it is the rant of one resentfully experiencing another eviction. The second in two years. Neither, remarkably enough, the product of my own bad attitude or delinquency in the matter of rent. I wouldn’t mind so much were it so. Rather it seems, both times at the whims of landlords who had agendas that did not include my welfare. This time in fact it could be inferred that the landlord has been delinquent in his disregard for my welfare. Not only has he dumped me into a rental market similar to that of soviet Russia when three generation extended families lived in two bedroom flats, he has sent painters and floor sanders to torture me through these last dismal days with their racket and in the case of the sanders their toxic fumes. Between them and the nut who has rented the garage out the back for the last twenty years to store his “valuable” collection, (have to be good stuff to be worth twenty years storage rent) I can’t even put out my rubbish as all the bins are constantly full. I guess it’s the tenants lot to be a mere commodity at the whim of the markets greedy desires or as Bob Dylan put it “only a pawn in their game” I’m reflecting now on those poor shmucks I saw today opening their still not vacated flats for the mercifully short viewing times in the hope no doubt of a speedy bond clearance or good reference. They stand amongst the not flash rubble of their rented lives and would not, I’m sure, feel much more embarrassed without their pants on.

Ahh Blogspot! Thank you for your courage in publishing the obviously libellous rantings of one so deranged as I. Venting ones spleen and witnessing it in a published form, even though few will read it, is so curative don’t you think?