Long term rental security is a major issue for us, as our little girl is starting school this year. The last thing we would want is to uproot her again, by changing schools because of unexpected rental increases. This happened in our previous rental, despite the landlord saying he would increase once every three years, the real estate had other ideas and increased twice in four years.

My partner and I lived in a 2 BR, bottom floor unrenovated flat in Randwick for 6 years.  We were good, reliable tenants - so much so that the strata managers ended up using us as their main contact for maintenance issues in the building.  

Most of the maintenance done on our flat was handled by the landlord's son, who freely admitted that his father believed in letting his properties stay in a decrepit state.  Our landlord was using rent money from these rundown properties to fund his retirement.

From Joel - I'd been renting the apartment the apartment for a couple of years, after taking over the lease from a friend who'd been there for years before. Pretty good relationship with the agent and pretty absent landlord. At one stage the landlord requested a rent increase, not unreasonably as the rent had been low as the apartment was showing heavy wear and tear compared to other apartments in the complex.

We had an agreement with the agent that the rent increase would be on hold until a list of maintenance and repairs were completed. My mistake was to not get this in writing. Nine months after the initial request, with the maintenance uncompleted, the agent moved on to another company. The new agent hit me with an eviction warning over unpaid rent over the nine months period for the amount that the increase would have been.