Hi All
I own a DHA investment – under the scheme where they sell a property to you and you lease it back to them for an agreed term.
I recently received their yearly rental appraisal letter which increased the rent by $10 a week, from $430 a week to $440.
I was quite surprised by this – an annual increase of 2.3% where the rental market here has moved 10%+, probably more in this area. I did a bit of digging as I suspected this rental appraisal was way off and found places much smaller and in less desirable locations within the suburb renting for $470 a week to the general public. My DHA property backs on to a lake with beautiful views, with 216m2 of internal living area and 373m2 of under roof area – a monster for the area. It also has a concrete pool and a large yard for the area. The ones renting for $470 a week had 1 less bedroom, were up to 30% smaller and had no pool, and backed on to a main road.
I wonder if anyone else here has had this issue with DHA rentals before – I feel that they perhaps just lowball the initial rental appraisal. There is a secondary review process you can invoke by getting your own appraisal (from a registered valuer) and sending it in to them. I wonder if anyone has had any success with this – as any change still seems to be at their discretion.
Any experiences here?
Regards
AdamHi Adam,
I understand too well what you are saying. I had to put up with similar scenario for few years. My lease expired in April 2006 and DHA’s last rent appraisal was $270 p/w and I managed to rent it the same month for $310 p/w. I spoke to few valuers and they said that they get this all the time. It will cost you few hundred dollars each year to get your independent valuation done and than you will finish somewhere berween your valuation and their valuation.
I will never consider to purchase DHA’s property again, considering high management fee and rip off valuation. Good luck.I will like to see few more experience about this as being an new to PI its good to build the list of some Do’s and Don’ts and with 2 experiences up there its going towards Don’ts so any more experience will be helpful.[specool]
I heard a Perth property author/spokesperson say a couple of weeks ago to for a DHA property if you want a secure tenant and property looked after and don’t want to stress too much about your property. The payoff is though that you get less rent.
The issue is though, that they claim to pay you market rent appraised by an “independent” valuer. Independent no doubt means valuers that would do anything to keep their contract to value DHA properties…
They certainly aren’t paying market rent here.
I had one rent appraisal before lease expired. The VALUER raised it by $5pw. I felt this was questionable but when i tried to rent it privately found it was fair. The new carpets and paint only got $5 more and it was vacant for 4 weeks.
I suspect the valuer- their repport is available- take the average of 3 like properties.
This is in a regional town.Would be a good idea to do some homework on who the stakeholders are and what money changes hands and goes where with DHA properties. Then you might understand the motives behind some rent appraisals.
Interestingly though I have a DHA property in canberra for which I just received a $70pw increase!!
Still not sure why?
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