Showing posts with label letting agent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letting agent. Show all posts

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Rent My Estate

For landlords who do not like real estate agents, a new service -- Rent My Estate -- allows landlords to list on real-estate.com.au.  It provides a good interface for landlords to create and manage online advertisements.

Where the rent is about $650 a week, an agent will typically charge more than $4,000 a year for property management services.  Most agents, in my opinion, do a poor job on the rental side.  So if you have the time and skills, and live near your rental property, you can save a substantial amount and get a better result using Rent My Estate.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Holiday Letting Agent Investigation

An interesting article in the AFR on 9 August (page 45) about StayMint (or Mint?) real estate letting agent, and how (it is alleged) they were renting out apartments on a short term basis, but not paying the owners for the rentals.  It seems that the government is investigating.  This is not a rare problem -- I have heard similar stories in the past about apartment buildings in Brisbane that are rented out on a short term basis, and holiday apartments on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts where the real estate agent or onsite agent pockets the money and tells the owner that the apartment is vacant.  This same business manages Skyline in Brisbane.

See "Stay Mint Faces Complaint"

"The Queensland Office of Fair Trading is investigating holiday letting company StayMint, a wholly-owned subsidiary of listed property group Ariadne, following complaints from owners of a Gold Coast apartment block about financial irregularities. Fair Trading officers raided the StayMint office at a Broadbeach apartment complex, Carmel by the Sea, last Thursday and seized financial documents.... The owners said they had discovered people had stayed in their apartment but the stay was not recorded in the monthly statement to the owner, and the rent not paid."