Apartment Rental Alternatives in Australia

If you are moving abroad to live in Australia and are looking for a place to live you may not want to live in an apartment. There are a number of apartment alternatives in Australia for expats looking for short term rental accommodations other than apartments. Lodgings, boarding houses and sharing are some of the most common apartment alternatives for expatriates living in Australia.

A popular alternative to apartment renting is to take up lodgings in a private home. This is great for the home owners as a lot of home owners have difficulty meeting their mortgage payment obligations and take in lodgers to offset the cost. It is great for expatriates as it offers a full immersion experience into the Australian culture. The way that lodging works is similar to utilizing a bed and breakfast. You will be living in a home with an Australian family and your rent includes half-board, which means that you get breakfast and an evening meal. The tradeoff is that you have to eat at certain times to take advantage of the meals. Schools and colleges often arrange lodgings for foreign students.

A boarding house is quite similar lodgings except that you would not be the only person paying rent. Instead there would be a large number of people all paying rent.

A lot of students and young professionals choose sharing over lodging and boarding houses as apartment alternatives. This is most typical in the cities where the rent is exceptionally high. In a shared accommodation you will be sharing a kitchen, bathroom, dining room and living room with the other tenants of the house or apartment. You may even be sharing a bedroom. All of the bills will be split and usually the cooking and cleaning is split among tenants. An obvious advantage to this is being able to live in an area or a place that you would not be able to afford on your own. And the obvious downside is that you have to live with other people. While this is popular in Australia, it is important to make sure that sharing is permitted in the place you will be living. And each tenant should be listed on the tenancy agreement. You can find shared accommodations in any newspaper or magazines in the major cities of Australia. There are also agents that specialize in matching you with people with similar interests for a fee of around $150.

And if you happen to be a student you can get housing on or near campus at an inexpensive cost. The downside is that this type of housing is rather limited and hard to come by since it is in high demand. Most colleges and universities have a housing officer that should be able to assist you in your search if you are a student.