Probably the biggest financial thing this week has been receiving all of our rent money, which happened last Wednesday. 

I’d been checking the banking and the real estate agency owner’s portal and hadn’t seen anything, so I called the property manager on Tuesday who looked into it and could see that we have received the rent from the tenant but it hadn’t been released. Turns out they didn’t have our bank details so I gave them. I know I sent them via email but I couldn’t be bothered making a big deal on it so I simply quoted them the details again, and the property manager entered them on the system, and we received the money the next day, so we’re very happy about that. 

The tenants paid six months rent in advance so to know that we have six months rent sitting there on the outset is a massive load off our minds. Am so so happy about that! You can’t put a price on peace of mind!!!

I entered in all the expenses made to get our property rental ready (around $4200, but $2200 was for the ducted heating unit that died in the month of moving house.. that was so awful but anyway, moving onwards and upwards), our rental income, all upcoming expenses and then paid the last remaining bills for the electricity and carbon monoxide tests. We also had a move out clean done and owe $350 but the cleaner hasn’t sent the bill so we will pay it when we get the bill.. it was done over a month ago so hopefully they don’t forget to do it. Anyway we will pay when required. 

So our tenants are paid up to the 31st January next year.. they pay $410 per week and according to the bank calculations given when we applied for finance, they technically allow for 80% of the rent received to pay against the mortgage because the other 20% is generally required for expenses such as council (property) rates, water rates etc.  This sounds about right but we had to pay $1715 in fees to the agent for advertising ($350), a fee for leasing the property ($615) and then commission on the rent received (the balance), so technically we have exactly 26 weeks of $328 (the  80%) to pay towards the mortgage payment. 

This likely means that for the next 6 months we need to pay from our own pocket any extra expenses.. we won’t have to pay for advertising or leasing fees early next year though so it should get a little bit easier, from January next year we should be able to save away the 20% to cover the rent expenses and pay the 80% towards the mortgage.