A big thing that annoys me is rental gouging when renewing leases. IMO its a national scam. Happens to heaps of people I know. You rent a house, lease it for a year, lease comes up, they whack 3-5% on the rent for 'market adjustment' reasons or whatever, regardless of what the rental market is actually doing, regardless of how good a tenant you've been. It used to happen a bit, once every few years, and usually was fair enough, a CPI or genuine market adjustment, now it seems routine.
Then you move out of the house and they advertise it at market value, which is often the original price of your rent before annual increases.
Eg, a friend moves into a 2 bedroom house at $360 pw on a 6 mth lease. After 6 months she wants to sign a new lease for 12 months, the say ok, rent is now $375. 12 months passes, same again, want another year, $385 pw thanks. End of that year she moves, house goes on realestate.com for $360, its market value. The landlord and agent have gouged $2K on the basis of it being a big hassle to move.
I reckon this is an unreported widespread rort.
