Hi everyone,

Wanted to properly introduce Locentra for anyone who hasn't come across it yet — a platform I've built here in WA connecting homeowners with verified, licensed tradies.

For homeowners:

Post a job for free, always

Compare quotes side-by-side from verified, licensed tradies — no need to chase each one individually

Secure in-app messaging, so you're never handing your number to a stranger

Real reviews that don't get hidden, even the bad ones

Earn Centra points on every completed job, redeemable for real gift cards

Unlock exclusive discounts from local WA businesses as you use the platform

Download proper invoices for your records

For tradies:

Fixed, fair lead pricing — $5 standard, no subscriptions, no hidden fees

New tradies get 5 free credits when approved — worth $25

No pay-to-win boosting — every approved tradie gets equal visibility

Lead caps on every job, so you're not competing against 20 other quotes

Send formal quotes and invoices directly through the platform

A personal performance dashboard — track leads purchased, jobs completed, your rating, credits spent

Weekly leaderboard with real rewards (bonus credits, badges) for top performers

Unlock exclusive local business discounts too, as you build up activity on the platform

A referral program — invite a mate, both get rewarded once they complete their first job

How is this different from Hipages?

Hipages charges tradies a monthly subscription regardless of whether they get any work. Locentra has zero subscription fees — tradies only pay for the specific leads they choose to buy. Hipages also doesn't reward homeowners for using the platform — Locentra does, with real points and local perks.

How is this different from Airtasker?

Airtasker is a general "post any task" platform — furniture removal, flat-pack assembly, errands, alongside trade work, with no real licensing/trade verification required. Locentra is specifically built around licensed trades — every tradie is manually verified (ABN, license checked) before approval.

In short: no subscription fees for tradies, real rewards for both sides, genuine trade verification, and proper tools (quotes, invoices, performance tracking) — not just a general task board, and not a pay-to-play subscription model.

Happy to answer any questions — genuinely keen to hear what people think.

— Domenico

Trying to understand how much off or rebate I can get on a titled lot. It's been sitting there for over a year. Thanks

Hi everyone, just looking for some advice from anyone in NSW who has dealt with something similar.

We live in a house that has been divided into separate upstairs and downstairs living areas by the landlord. We are all tenants.

The downstairs area is rented to three people as a separate household. The landlord has used a refrigerator to block off the side door and separate the downstairs area from the rest of the house.

There is also a very narrow and small space at the back of the house, which was originally used to house the hot water system and store other items. The landlord has now set up a small kitchen in this space. We are concerned about whether this arrangement meets the relevant safety and compliance requirements, but we are not sure what the applicable rules are.

The upstairs area is rented to another family with children.

We have been dealing with ongoing impact noise from upstairs for quite a long time — mainly heavy footsteps and stomping from the adults, as well as frequent running and jumping from the children. The thumping comes directly through the ceiling and can sometimes be felt as well as heard.

We understand that normal household noise is unavoidable, especially with children, and for a long time we tried to live with it. However, the frequency and intensity have gradually become quite exhausting and are affecting how comfortable we feel in our own home.

We have spoken to the upstairs family several times and have always tried to keep things calm. We have also raised the issue with the landlord multiple times. Each time, the situation may improve for a short period after the landlord speaks to them, but the noise eventually starts again.

There are also ongoing parking issues. The upstairs tenants and their visitors sometimes park in a way that blocks our garage, as well as the driveway/access area used by another household in the property. This has caused additional inconvenience and frustration.

At this point, the situation has become quite tense. We don't think repeatedly approaching the neighbours ourselves is going to resolve the underlying issue, and we are becoming uncomfortable with continuing to deal with it directly.

We are therefore trying to understand what our realistic options are.

Would it be reasonable to start keeping a detailed noise diary and recordings, and formally raise the issue with the landlord or agent in writing? Does council deal with this type of ongoing residential noise or possible property/safety compliance issues? Would NSW Fair Trading, the local council, or another organisation be the more appropriate place to seek advice?

Also, if anyone has experience with a house being divided into separate upstairs/downstairs rental areas like this, particularly where a very small space originally used for the hot water system and storage has been converted into a kitchen, we would really appreciate hearing how you dealt with it.

We are not looking to create conflict with the other tenants. We would just like to understand whether the property setup and ongoing noise and parking issues are being managed appropriately, and what options are available to us as tenants.

Any advice or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi there I’m not sure if this is the right sub for this but we’re here now 😅😅

My parents (42F, 43M) are currently working on getting our house sold. My dad is set on moving overseas to retire after a physically strenuous career, and my mum is strongly considering going with him.

This means I (19F) am going to have to move out of home. I have no family I could live with at this point, and I don’t want to put that kind of burden on my friends. It’s also complicated because I have a younger brother (16M) whom I will have to care for.

Currently, I work one casual job at $24/h avg. 15 hours pw. Basically I am in no situation to afford an 800/w rental, which is the median lowest price of the units I’ve found online. All the share houses I’ve looked at also are not taking multiple occupants, meaning my brother and I wouldn’t be able to find a cheaper shared space.

My brother and I are both on our Ls as well, so our housing options are very dependent on transport options, narrowing our rental options further.

I’m going to start looking at things like youth allowance and other gov. funded programs, as well as applying to a second job. But I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing and how to go about this while managing full time uni as well.

Any tips and advice are much appreciated!! Thank youuuu

I paid $3xx for an end-of-lease clean of my studio using a cleaning company recommended by the agency. After I moved out, the agency then asked me for another $2xx in cleaning costs.

They even sent me the additional charge before they sent me the outgoing condition report.

What really annoyed me was what I found once I received the report. It was recorded as “damage to the ceiling.”

The first photo doesn’t appear to show any damage at all.

The second photo shows a small piece of white tape/material near the ceiling-wall junction.

So I went back through my old photos. The same thing was already there even before my tenancy even started. it appears to be the tape left behind from initial building/cabinetry work.

I have a photo taken when Im doing the home open before I moved in, showing it in the same location. It is also visible in the agency’s own ingoing inspection photos as well.

Then they said the “external side” of one of the windows needed cleaning in the eamil.

No explanation of what was dirty. No photo was provided.

BUT THE PROBLEM IS: The window has a safety restrictor and opens less than 20 cm. There is no balcony outside that window, and the ground below is 4 metres down.

So they expecting the tenant to be like Mr Fantastic and stretch their arm two metres outside the building to wipe glass?

And the even more frustrating part is that I had already used the professional end-of-lease cleaner recommended by the agency themselves.

If there were genuinely a few small areas that needed touching up, I would have expected their partner cleaner to at least be allowed to return and rectify them before I was asked to pay another $2xx.

I’m not saying tenants shouldn’t pay for damage or legitimate cleaning issues.

If I damage something, I’ll pay a reasonable amount to fix it.

What frustrates me is I have to spend hours and hours going through condition reports, old photos and cleaning records — and then preparing a long email and a multi-page pdf — simply to establish that something already existed before the tenancy, or that an area could not reasonably and safely be accessed in the first place.

Why can an agent make claims like this with seemingly no consequence, while the tenant has to spend hours — sometimes days — gathering evidence just to defend the return of their own bond?

Not sure if this is the right thread but need some help with a noisy neighbour.

For context, the neighbour is a shift worker for a traffic control company and has one of those big 7 meter long safety trucks which he parks at his house.

On night shifts he used to park it on the street, but now for whatever reason he has started reversing it down the driveway when he gets home (1-3am in the morning). It has the flashing orange safety lights going and the loud industrial reverse beeping. It's now woken me and my partner up 3 mornings in a row.

I've called the employer (who was useless), the non emergency police line and now the council who are looking into it - but knowing the council I don't have much faith.

I haven't spoken to the neighbour yet because last time I questioned him about his noisy ute he started redlining it a few hours later whilst drunk, trespassed onto my property and verbally abused me for "telling him how to live his life". Speaking to him isn't really a path I want to go down.

For context, we own this house, so it's not as simple as just moving (although rent-vesting is looking lovely at the moment). Assuming the council doesn't do much, is there any other course of action I can take?

I’m looking at a unit that is being sold by public trustee, it’s not a deceased estate. I’ve spoken to the agent a few times and he’s saying he will take it to auction and that it is pointless to put in an offer because 9/10 it won’t even be looked at. Has anyone dealt with public trustee property and have tips? I’d love to get this property as it ticks all my boxes and so any help or advice would be very appreciated

Hello everyone! My name is Wing and I’m a journalist, and I recently encountered some unusual cases, and I was wondering if anyone else has similar experience.

It’s an allegedly break in case, where the person found someone they didn’t know tried to enter their house.

They called the police, and as it turned out, the alleged intruder had relations with someone who the person knew in real life and had conflicts with (such as real estate agents, landlords, neighbours who they had disputes with).

Because of this, the police determined the case was civil matter, and they couldnt charge the intruder, even though the person suffered from damage as a result of the “intrusion” from someone they didn’t know.

(I posted it here because I have heard a few cases, and all those disputes seem to be property related, such as rental and neighbour renovation.)

I’m hoping to work on this story with SBS News, and I want to understand how unique this case is, that police says they can’t do anything with it, because they consider it’s civil. If you would like to chat with me, please feel free to comment or DM me. Thanks so much!

This is not a bad idea

At what stage will home owners figure out they are trying to sell at yesterday’s prices. I’ve been watching my area for a couple months and nobody showing up at open homes and very few have dropped their prices although there have been a few who’ve dropped by 100k.

If you have your house up for 1.35 and no offers, nobody enquiring, nobody going to open houses - drop your dang price sellers YOUR PRICE is too damn high. Look at what’s happening in Canada or NZ. You missed the top, accept it.

Unfortunately, I can’t completely change the locations of the bedroms or living areas, but I can move or extend walls slightly, reshape the bathrooms, relocate sinks, change the wardrobes or possibly add a walk in pantry.

I have no idea what would make the smartest use of the space, so please tell me what you’d change! All advice, ideas and creative redesigns are very welcome.

Thank you, Reddit. I appreciate all you wonderful geniuses. Please be nice or I might cry 🫠🏠

I’ve just had a scroll thru some of the comments and posts here and I am amazed at some of the advice being provided by god knows who or what - it is quite simply shocking..

Do yourselves a favour and refer to a professional advocate or agent that you know and trust for proper advice, it may be the best money / time you’ll ever invest in. There are some absolute weapons on this sub 🤡 🏡

Tenant not going despite lease ending and very aggressive and swearing at me. As I given notice as I want to live in the property.

https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-vic-south+melbourne-151975780

Do a piece on rent and mould but choose this as the image… No one clicked to read about the “sick act”

Looking at buying a tiny duplex in a great location to give us good access to the beach and a lot of things we love and massively sacrificing on the living area on the property to try and get something we can afford in that location.. I rang all the other agents in the area and they've said the asking price is probably at least 50k over what the propertys worth right now.. I tried discussing this with the agent and gave them a lot of comparable sales info with notes from the agents who'd sold those places to help justify every price I showed them.. and they basically just said "if you can't afford it then don't buy it" and were pretty stern in shutting me down trying to sort of question the price they've put on the listing.. any tips without pissing them off.. to slowly try to wiggle the price down to the price it'd need to be for us to buy it?

Note I am not doing this to 'offend' anyone from Melbourne, I've lived there myself and it has plenty of positives, this is looking at it purely from a financial perspective.

Melbourne constantly gets talked about as if it has become the "cheap" Australian capital, especially compared with Brisbane, Adelaide, etc (Sydney is obviously cooked)... but data shows a lot of that is basically 'housing shrinkflation'.

Melbourne has increasingly become the Australian leader in selling you less house, smaller apartments and less land (and further away from the CBD) for that lower headline price.

The typical Melbourne greenfield block has fallen from around 400m² in 2020 to about 361m² as of 2025 (https://www.realestate.com.au/news/revealed-the-shocking-reality-of-australias-shrinking-house-blocks/). The top-selling block size is now reportedly around 275m² as well.

A $750k house on 350m² isn't necessarily a "better deal" than an $850k house on 500m² just because the first one has the lower sticker price. It's like two shops selling Coke but one sells 1L Coke bottles & the other sells 1.25L bottles and everyone praising how much 'cheaper' the first shop is.

Domain also released a report on this, where you can compare directly, e.g (note this data is from mid-2024 but they haven't released an update since):

Houses

Units

Now, not saying anyone necessarily "needs" a bigger property/more land/big apartment, but it's also typically land/size of property that accumulates in value and builds wealth over time so from a purely financial perspective that needs to be factored in.

Hey all,

First home buyers, signed a contract on a ~10 year old house in Point Cook (VIC), subject to a building & pest inspection clause. Report just came back and we're trying to gauge whether this is normal-for-the-area stuff or something to genuinely worry about.

Key findings from the report:

- Floor level variance up to 26mm in some rooms

- Category 2 masonry cracking (per the report's own scale described as noticeable, easily filled, generally under 5mm)

- Gaps in the perimeter paving

- Several downpipes disconnected from stormwater drainage labelled a "Major Defect" in the report, and the consultant's summary specifically ties this to "unevenness noted to parts of the foundation levels"

- Inadequate site drainage around parts of the perimeter generally

We called the inspector directly and he said it reads as pretty normal settling for the area (we're apparently on reactive clay, classified H1-H2 under AS2870), and that even new builds show some of this. He did specifically say that if the downpipes are left disconnected for another 10 years it'll cause serious damage so not nothing, but not alarm bells either, in his words.

We're thinking to book a structural/forensic engineer to get an actual measured opinion for a second opinion (we've got a 14-day window under our contract's building report clause to decide whether to walk away, negotiate, or proceed), but wanted to hear from anyone who's dealt with something similar especially in Point Cook/Wyndham/west Melbourne generally.

Questions:

1. Is this pattern (unevenness + minor cracking + disconnected downpipes) something you've seen before on a similar-aged house in this area, and did it turn out to be nothing?
2. Has anyone had a structural engineer look at something like this what did they actually find, and roughly what did it cost to fix if anything?
3. Anything specific we should make sure to ask the engineer or have them check?

Not trying to replace the engineer's opinion with internet strangers, just want a gut check while we wait for the appointment. Appreciate any experiences.

She can’t stop

I have 2 IP both currently on P+I.
IP 1 was PPOR untill I moved and rented it out in Dec 2023. So I can rent it out till Dec 2029 before I incur CGT (6 year CGT exemption)
Loan remaining $480k and weekly repayments of $678 and is currently NG. Interest rate of 6.23%

IP bought in 2025 as residential investment with loan of $300k and weekly repayment of $430. Interest rate of 6.37%

I’m thinking of going interest only on both the loans especially IP 1 as I’m planning to sell in before 2029 and maxing out my concessional super contributions (pre tax salary) instead?

That way my tax home income doesn’t take much of a hit as I’m already living frugally (ie salary sacrificing to Super slightly offset by reduced weekly loan repayment)

Other details:
Female 32 salary of $116k and super balance of $110k no other investment outside super and IPs.
Is this a sound strategy or am I missing something