Well there has been a flurry of activity at Hit The Toad headquarters lately.  In preparation of listing the house for lease we had been de-cluttering and cleaning ready for presentation to potential tenants (and trying to get a jump start on the packing up process).

We also tried to think of all the little maintenance jobs to tackle now so we wouldn’t have to pay someone to fix them for us while we are away.  Here’s what we’ve done:

• Kitchen tap – a couple of months ago the mixer tape went ‘click’ and suddenly only provides half flow.  It still works, but the slow flow is annoying so we went down to Bunnings and bought a new tap and Craig replaced it.
• Shower head – the showerhead was also looking a bit worse for wear, we decided to replace this also
• Shower – Craig did an excellent job of re-grouting the tiles
• Replaced washers in all bathroom taps – one needed doing, so we thought we may as well do all of them
• Cleaned bathroom air vent
• Replaced the broken window – One of the first things we did when we moved into the house was to install locks on the windows.  Unfortunately when installing them one of the windows cracked.  As Craig is a glazier, Emma thought this would be replaced fairly quickly.  Eight years later water had started coming through the crack and Craig finally spent 20 minutes and replaced the glass.
• Cleaned the gutters
• Cleaned the filter on air conditioner
• Replaced the light bulb and filter on the kitchen range hood
• Pruning and general garden tidy up of the garden
• Replaced smoke detector batteries

Once the house was ready to go we looked for a local property agent to manage the house for us.  Emma went through the local paper and contacted five agents.  Two didn’t bother to phone back.  One kept playing phone tag as we kept missing each others calls.  Of the two Emma actually spoke to and got the fee structure from, one was going to charge 10% fee while the other was only going to deduct 5%.   It didn’t take long to make a choice on who we’d go with.

The agent was confident that we would find an appropriate tenant quickly.  The house was listed on a Tuesday, an open for inspection held Saturday and several applications were waiting on the Monday.  So the whole process was done in a week.

We now have only two weeks to pack up and move out.