This is a very timely question. With university offers finalised, tertiary students across Australia have commenced the urgent quest for accommodation for the 2023 academic year.

Regardless of market cycles, the return of university students will always squeeze rental vacancy rates in our capital cities and regional university towns.

A combination of persistence, punctuality and presentation will be critical in helping prospective tenants into a home. There’s no escaping the fact you must wear out some shoe leather and inspect as many rental homes as you can.

Treat a meeting with a property manager like a job interview – present as neat and tidy, and this might involve wearing smart casual attire, including clean shoes rather than shorts and thongs.

Organise some references from employers, university lecturers, schoolteachers, a family doctor, or solicitors – and especially past property managers or landlords. Remember references are essential.

Also, organise your paperwork such as your motor vehicle licence and/or passport, as well as some evidence of your earning capacity such as payslips and so on to make it easier for a property manager to assess your application.

It would be helpful to consider taking mum and dad to inspections. It might sound cheesy to some, but it often works. Even getting parents or guardians to countersign a lease agreement can help, making them jointly responsible for the lease.

Now, if you intend to rent the property with several other student friends, put some ground rules in place. For starters, make sure all tenants sign the lease to ensure you have equal property rights, and equal liability for maintaining the property and ensuring the rent is paid in a timely fashion.

When it comes to paying the rent, you might decide to pay your portion separately, but at the same, it might be worth electing one of the share mates to be the head tenant to chase up slow payers.

Also, before you sign the lease, work out how to share the rent fairly. One way to do this is to pay based on how much space each tenant uses. To get an accurate breakdown, get the square meterage of each bedroom from your Property Manager and divide it by the total square meterage of the property. This provides a percentage of space each room occupies, and this percentage can be used to calculate each tenant’s contribution to the weekly rent. This method should also consider any situation where one tenant has an ensuite or balcony, and another doesn’t.

Your Raine & Horne Property Manager can answer all your questions about renting a property for the first time. Or check out our Renting tips and  Tenant FAQs.