WELCOME TO AFFORDABLE RENTALS BRISBANE

YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. In this blog we will write articles about the Social Security System and those issues, that affects people that rent, and also those that own properties for rent. We hope that our articles will help them understand the situation better. L S H.

Thursday, February 23, 2023

Australia affordable houses.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IN THIS BLOG WE WILL WRITE SEVERAL BUILDING ARTICLES, ABOUT HOW TO DO IT YORSELF BUILDING WORKS, WHICH CAN HELP TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, IF YOU WANT TO FIX THE HOUSE YOURSELF. 
Here are some other links to our internet articles


Let us talk about affordable houses, Here in Australia, most houses are a stand alone house on a block of land, and some affordable houses will look like this one in the picture. Anyhow, because a simple small house, would be more affordable than a large one, it will attract more buyers than a large and well decoerated house. So, there are builders that will build small houses. Because they are easyer to sell. 

Australia affordable houses

Welcome to my article, Australia affordable houses

Dear readers, this may not be the article where you can find houses to buy today, because it is the story of my life and what I did, when I was working building these affordable houses. In those times, new affordable houses were built on the fringe of the city in new suburbs, which is the same as today, if you want a new affordable house, you must look for it, in the new suburbs. We will also talk about earning and saving money, one of the aims for saving money is to buy our own house. So, let us talk the houses that we can afford.

As we know, houses are not all the same, because houses come in a variety of styles and sizes. Of course, we want to live in the best houses available, but most of us cannot afford expensive houses, therefore, we should be happy to live in any house that we can afford to buy or rent.

For this reason of affordability, to satisfy the house supply market, there are several types of houses that are being built at any given time. In this article, we are going to talk about the type of houses that I ended up working on, in the sixties. Because this article is meant to cover the story of my life, and what I did for a living.

In the early sixties, I ended up working on average houses that the working class could afford to buy, or at least the aim of the builders that were building them, was based in this affordability, since they had designed them with this purpose, because in the end, even though they had been built cheap not all of us workers would afford to buy these types of houses. But anyhow this was the purpose of building these types of affordable houses in the early sixties.

I guess that today is the same, some builders, build these affordable houses at the outskirt of any town or city, since the blocks of land are cheaper to buy.

Now let us try to describe how we were building these houses from scratch.

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Building houses from scratch. 

Anyhow, I am writing these articles about building houses from scratch, because I want to tell you the story of my life, and what I did when I came to Australia. But at the same time, I want to write something useful for my readers, and I believe that knowing how houses are built is useful to know, because we live in houses, therefore, we want to know as much as we can about them. Because sometimes we need to know how to do it yourself repairs and other things, since houses need to be maintained, if we want to enjoy them fully. So, I am going to describe how these houses were built, with as many details as I can, so that anyone interested can learn something useful from these building articles.

Now has I have explained in our last article, I was working in the building industry with this Italian builder, which was good for me because my native language is Italian. Now, with this builder not only we were re-stumping or building rooms under the existing houses, which required a lot of work to be done by hand, but we were building new houses from scratch. As I have said at the beginning of the sixties most of the digging were done by hand, specially the type of work that we were doing on these new houses, as machines were expensive to hire then, So, they were used only, if there was a lot of digging to be done, and with the machines of those days we could only dig straight forward things and not small detailed digging, as they were required to build these houses, anyhow as I said, I did a lot of this digging work myself, as I was employed as builder labour, and this was one of the jobs that I had to do.

Therefore now, let us imagine that I have finished digging the foundation and these stump holes for this new house, and now, we need to lay concrete in the foundation, and to concrete the stumps foundation and the stumps themselves. So, let us go over what we had to do, because in those times these things were all done on site by hand and started from scratch.

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 Making your own concrete. 

Making your own concrete on site from scratch

Let me explain, what is meant by concrete in buildings and how it is made You see, if during your life, you are going to do renovations, it is useful to know how to make your own concrete, so that you understand what is required and how and why it must be done in certain ways, you will find this information written in this article. Some people can say that today things are different, so why bother to tell us this stuff about how to mix concrete properly, when we can buy concrete ready mixed by truckload, or in bags and all you need to do is to add water to make concrete. I say, okay, you can do that. But there are times and places, when you must do these things the old way.

Therefore, I believe that you still need to know how concrete is made from scratch, because that is the only way if you don’t want to make mistakes. Therefore, let me tell you how we were mixing our concrete in the sixties, and what is required to do that and how it is supposed to be done, if you want a good job done and the concrete to last a long time.

By the way, here we need to clarify one thing, what is meant by the word concrete, because most people replace it with the word cement. On building sites, the word concrete means the element mixed together able to harden to a solid consistency within a certain length of time, therefore, it has got to be done the right way.

One of the most important things while mixing concrete is that the concrete must be well mixed and to a workable consistency using the least amount of water possible, because if too much water is used then the concrete becomes weaker, therefore, it must be done properly.

Usually concreting and other jobs are done according to its specifications, you see, any firm that makes building plans, for a house or something of more importance, they must write also the specification how the job needs to be done. In these specifications it will be written what material to use, how to use it and the quantity and quality required. Therefore, to concrete a foundation for an average small house, the specification could state that the concrete must be mixed to a consistency at least 1 to 6; for people that knew this, it means that to mix the concrete you should use 1 part of Portland cement 2 parts of river sand and 4 parts of gravel (aggregate) and mix it as required until an even consistency is achieved. For the stumps usually would be a bit more cement than the foundations. But I must say that sometimes even these rules had to be changed a bit depending on the material that can be delivered on that local site.

Now let us say that we are ready to start mixing the first batch of concrete, as we have made everything ready, and everything has been delivered. To make concrete you need at least four elements of materials plus clean water; 1 Portland cement, 2 washed river sand, 3 clean or washed gravel and 4 reinforcement steel rods, and it is helpful if you have a mixer if you have to mix a large amount of concrete, because to mix by hand is hard work and the concrete needs to be well mixed.

Now let us start the mixer and make the first batch, while the mixer is turning around, the very first thing you put in the mixer is water, one must be careful not to put too much water to start with, it has got to be just enough to mix everything to a certain consistency, so let us say that we put 8 litres of water (the amount of water can be different, since it depends on the amount of water that is already in the (sand gravel) aggregate) then we put in the mixer cement, next is the river sand twice as much as the cement and then the clean gravel 4 time as much as the cement; here the mixer is going around and mixing everything together.

Please note, that if you change the way you put your materials in the mixer, from what I have described above, you may have different result, and usually it would take longer to mix everything properly and to the right consistency.

For people that do this job all the time it is easy for them to see if the concrete that is being mixed has the right consistency required, once you know this, if it is too dry just add a bit of water and if it is too wet you should add a bit of everything else. There you are it is not too hard if you know how to do it.

What I have written above applies only to house building of less importance, for building that are large and important the concrete needs to be to a very high standard and specifications, so, here again you need to know what is needed before you do anything.

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Concrete requires teamwork. 

To concrete well and do a fair amount of work on these houses you need a team, even if it is a small team. Our team was usually three of us, I as builder labour, John as bricklayer and Con the contractor who was a bricklayer and concreter. We didn’t mind if we switched around a bit to do the job. So, I was usually on the mixer mixing the concrete, one was with a wheelbarrow taking the concrete from the mixer to the foundations that we were concreting, and one was fixing the concrete in place.

Fixing the concrete for the foundation was physically the lightest job, when we were mixing the concrete with this mixer on site, but it is the most responsible job, because while concreting the foundations, you must make sure that the steel rods reinforcement was in the right position, at the same time you had to pack the concrete down and then the concrete in the foundations has to be finished level, this was easy when the ground was level, but when the ground was not level, it was necessary that steps were made and they had to be to gauge, which was equal to the thickness of one or two laid bricks or more, or the thickness of a laid block, if blocks were going to be used to build the walls on this foundation, whatever was going to be used to lay on the foundations, we had to try to make an adjustment while we were laying the foundations; therefore, this was the job for the experts, at that time it was not that hard, because mixing by hand even using a mixer was a slow job, so, the bloke that was fixing the concrete had enough time to do his job right.

What I have written above is how we used to lay small house foundations in the early sixties, which are the same as we lay foundations today, except that today we order concrete already mixed, but we have to be ready with everything and everything has got to be in the right place, because the concrete ready-mix truck will unload its concrete quickly, so, there is no time to do anything else except to fix the concrete at the right level as quickly as possible.

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Concreting stumps on site. 

Now let me go back again to the early sixties, when we were concreting these stumps on site, this procedure is not done much today, the reasons for this change it is because the buildings have changed, and today these stumps can be made in a concrete factory, and when cured can be delivered to the building site, where the worker can erect them as required.

To concrete these stumps on site we had steel forms of various length, and these forms were assembled together with steel pins, so, we would assemble these steel forms and then start to mix concrete, we had also to make sure that the stumps foundations were exactly in the right place by using the marked profiles and tight line between them.

In this case, it was an easy job for the fellow that is mixing concrete, but a lot harder for the blokes that had to pour the concrete in the stumps formwork and make sure that the stump was exactly in the right place and finished at the right height and were also plumb (perfect vertical position). It was also necessary that some reinforcing rods were placed in the right position with a purpose made devise. These are how we made those onsite stumps in the sixties.

These concrete stumps that we made in the sixties were better that the timber stumps that they were replacing, because it was an improvement as they did not rot with the passing of time and the white ants could not eat them. Here we can say that these concrete stumps on site were easy to make, if you knew the procedure, in fact it was easier to make a set of stumps than to fix concrete stumps made in the factory, as there is no heavy lifting involved.

But although these concrete stumps were easy to make, they are hard to move to a different position. So, to anyone that is going to attempt to dig out these stumps to move them to a new position, they better think twice because I tell you that the part that is under the ground is a lot larger than the stumps at the top. Remember what I said in our previous article, we had to dig a hole sixty-centimetre dip in the natural ground, and at the bottom should be a level base not less than forty centimetres square.

I believe that we have said enough in this article, as we have explained the work that we did on these affordable houses and we will be coming back to talk about more building work in our next article, House building in Brisbane

To see more and the original article click on this link, Australia affordable houses

See you soon.

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Monday, September 5, 2022

Australian housing industry.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT IS BEING RENTED, GET IN TOUCH WITH US. IN THIS BLOG WE WILL ALSO WRITE BUILDING ARTICLES, IN FACT, WE WILL EVEN WRITE SEVERAL HOW TO DO IT YORSELF BUILDING WORKS, WHICH CAN HELP TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS IN YOUR HOUSE. 

Here are some other links to our internet articles





I have been a bricklayer most of my life, so, I have been working and building these type of houses in the seventies. Houses building in Australia, seems to evolve more rapidly than in the old countries of Europe, perhaps because it is a new country. Anyhow you will understend this change when you read our blogs, 


Welcome to our article, Australian building industry 

Building houses in the sixties. 

Dear readers, the following blogs that I am writing here, will be about my life story and what I did to earn a living when I camo to Australia. Anyhow, these articles will be written is such a way that can help people to DIY brickwork and other building things, which we believe can help people that are willing to try DIY small building or repairs, but first let me explain how I acquired that knowledge myself.

When I came to Australia in the sixties, I ended up working in the building industry, we were working mainly on fixing old houses, or building new house from scratch, units and warehouses, so, I ended up learning how lots of building things were done, in the end I became a bricklayer, and have worked most of my life as a bricklayer.

Anyhow, in this article we are going to write about; the Australian housing industry in the sixties; Working in the Australian housing and building industry; Earning and saving money if you can; and Working with this Italian builder.

We believe that the Australian housing and building industry, is one of the major employment industries in Australia, you can say that this is so in other countries. But I believe that in other countries building new houses is not as important as it is in Australia. One of the reasons for this is that Australia is a new country, it needs and takes in many emigrants. In the sixties Australia was taking emigrants in a regulated way, now because the population grows steadily also accommodation need to grow steadily, therefore, new houses need to be built to keep a steady balance. This building of new houses gives opportunities for the newcomers to be employed, since there is manual work involved, therefore, a healthy cycle is created; but even with these opportunities the building industry has its ups and down, as we know. So, let us talk about it and try to make sense, if we can.  

You know, the housing building industry and real estate work together to complete the cycle of supplying to the public what is needed, so, both have their ups and downs, and it cannot be avoided. It could have been helpful if one could foretell what is going to happen next year, on the housing market, but it is not possible to guess what is going to happen in the future. If people can know this, then they could make money, since they could invest their money at the right time.

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Working in the building industry. 

As I have said, when I came to Australia from Italy, I ended up working in the building industry. Now let me explain this working position, working on building in Australia is a temporary job, because even the employer is subject to the same opportunities of work and he cannot help it, therefore, one is never sure what is going to happen next, when the job you are working on is finished, therefore, there were concerns about our employment status, so, we kept asking ourselves, whether our employer would get another job to do, before we finished the one we were doing, but even though we were thinking that, we still worked hard to finish the job on hand, as soon as possible, because to find work you had to be competitive.

Well, I should say that although this small Italian builder did lots of small jobs, it did work out all right most times, so, we were able to move from one job to another all-around Brisbane and to other close by town/s. Of course, this would cause worries if you had no transport of your own and you had to rely on some friends or the employer to take you on the work site, where the building was going to be built, but we managed somehow.

I remember that there were times, when I had to get up early and catch the first tram to the city, and then I had to catch the second tram to another suburb, where the builder would pick me up and drive me to the onsite job, in the evening after eight hours or more of hard work, I had to go back home, which took again a long time, but anyhow we managed all right, after all we were here in Australia to earn money, so, as long as we had a job to go to and earn money, we were happy to do that. You see, on building sites workers can earn above other people wages, but there was this uncertainty because there was no guaranty that the work would last, and it also was hard work all day long.

Anyhow, it was a good job with good opportunities to learn and improve your knowledge of building something yourself. You see, in those times we could improve our working and earning position more easily than today; it was possible then because a lot of things were simple, and therefore, they could be done just by using your common sense. Of course, there were always inspections from local authorities to follow, but once you knew what it was required, they were easy to follow, if you used your brains diligently, therefore, we should say that we had more opportunities then compared to today opportunities. I believe that it was so, because the building we were building were small houses, so, if you were a tradesman, you most likely could be the builder as well.

Having said that, now let us see, how this type of work affected us newcomers moneywise.      

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Learning how to earn and save money. 

Whatever you do in life, the most important thing is; Earning and saving money. In my case, because there was uncertainty of not having a permanent job in the building industry, we soon learned that whatever money we earned from our job, we had to save some, otherwise we could have problems soon or later; so, this disadvantage that we had in this job pushed most of us building workers to become good at saving money, because we wanted to feel safe and independent.

So, let me talk about money. In Australia because the economy is based on capitalism the more money you can earn and save the better off you are; of course, this is also true to most other part of the world, but in Australia seems to be more so, because it is a new country, and people rely more on what they can earn than anywhere else in the world. This is because there are not existing reach families that live on the earnings of the properties that have been passed down from generation to generations. Therefore, in Australia is mostly up to yourself, if you want to get richer, you should try harder to earn and save money. You see, most of the people here, have earned their own money.

Therefore, we must understand that in Australia, not only you have to try to earn money, but it is important that you should save it too, and at the same time you have to try to improve your working position, so, you can be more independent and not rely on others. This attitude can help if it happens that you lose your temporary job, and also by saving money you can start one day buying your own house, which is the most important thing that people must do, if they want to live an independent decent life. I know now that most of you are saying that this buying a house is a hard thing to do, but you see, this can be done because I have done it myself.

Anyhow, I believe that I have said enough about this money business; so, let me go back to tell you, my progress in the building industry and what I did to become a tradesman.

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Working and learning with this Italian builder. 

Dear readers, in these articles, while I am telling you the story about myself working in the Australian building industry, I am going to try to give you details of how things were done in those days; therefore, if you are one of those people that want to do your own building renovations one day, on those building that we built then, you can somehow guess what you can find, because you already know how we built them.

Now let me go back to when I started work with this Italian builder, who was a bricklayer and concreter, we were working on houses and because there was not enough bricklaying work on these houses, as they were mostly built with timber, we were building only the foundations, the concrete stumps and some brickwork as the base of the house. Of course, we did also some jobs under the existing houses, and this has given me an opportunity to learn many things about those old houses in Brisbane.

Just for comparison’s sake, to see the difference between those times and today, let me describe to you what we did to prepare a new base for a new timber house, which would be setting on concrete stumps and some brick walls.

First of all, we went to set up the site, if it was not set up from the builder or carpenter that was building the timber house. This setting up required that we should fix some timber frame to the ground with pegs and per the measurement in the plan. These timber frames are called profiles, and they are marked accurately to the measurement on the plan, so that we had the right measurement to go by, to start digging the foundations for the stumps and brick walls.

Then we had to dig the foundations, and this was mostly my job as I was the labour and I was pretty good at digging, this may seem hard to believe but even digging one has to be an expert to do a good job, as the shape and depth of the foundations is important to do a good job. Just to show you what I mean to dig a hole for a new concrete stump, 20x20 centimetres as most stumps were supposed to be; the hole for this stump should be in exactly the right place, it should be at least sixty centimetres deep in natural ground and at the bottom should have a circumference of at least 40 centimetres or more. These were the average specifications then, unless it was stated otherwise. I know this because I have dug several hundreds of them if not thousands.

All the tools that I needed to do this digging job were a pick a post hole shovel and a crowbar, it usually would take me a couple of days to dig the entire house holes, which could usually be between twenty and thirty holes. You see I was able to dig a hole in less than half an hour, but it was hard work. Sometimes when there was some brickwork to do, we had also to dig these foundations by hand; the foundations were usually dug according to specification, which usually would be 60 centimetre deep in the natural ground, this means that if the grounds had been filled up that filling should not be counted as depth.

Anyhow, before I finish writing this article, I want to say that those houses that we were building in the sixties, with this builder contractor that I was working for, they were average affordable house that the average family could afford to buy, and therefore, they were sold easily.

Now, I believe that I have said enough in this article and although there is a lot more that can be said, we are going to tell you in our next article, which is going to be about how we made those concrete stumps on site, while we were working on these, Australia affordable houses

To see more click on this link, Australian building industry

See you soon.

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Sunday, December 13, 2020

For rent early next year

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US. 

We have a unit coming up for rent early January 2021 


One unit in a block of five unit will be up for rent next year, so, keep an eye on this ad, as we will give you more details  
Close to all amenities. 









Just some photos of what is coming up. 
TO SEE MORE YOU NEED TO INSPECT THE PLACE. 
WE IT COMES UP, OUR PHONE NUMBER IS 3397 9614 
Call us if you are interested.
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The following are some other links to our internet articles
Some helpful links here under





Yola.com






Friday, November 18, 2016

Coorparoo 1 unit for rent

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
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Welcome to our blog, Affordable Rentals
and this post, Coorparoo 1 unit for rent
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Coorparoo 1 unit for rent
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The 2 bedroom unit for rent entry is the first door on the landing, as seen from the driveway.
There is one unit for rent, in this block of 5 units. There are more picture at the bottom of the blog to show you what we have. available now.



Coorparoo 1 unit for rent

 Available now

Address; flat 2- 28 Hipwood Avenue Coorparoo, Brisbane

Coorparoo, 2-bedroom flat for rent available from 18 November 2016 

This is a cheap clean 2 bedrooms flat for rent, $290.00 P.W.

Initial cost, 2 weeks rent + 4 weeks for bond

Minimum 3 months’ lease

Qualified tenants have to sign a minimum 3 months Rental Agreement

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For inspection call Frank Tel. 3397 9614

Open for inspection, Saturday between 9.30 AM to 10.30 AM
At any other times by appointment by calling this landline No; 33979614

Or visit our site any time you want at; 28- Hipwood Avenue Coorparoo and if you like what you see, then you can call Frank to make an appointment, Tel. No: 3397 9614;

Or you can email us at, hipwoodac@gmail.com

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Right side of flats, as seen from the road














Carport and laundry under building


Entry door in lounge room

View of kitchen and other stuff from lounge room.







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Upright gas stove two years old. Kitchen and cupboards are okay.


Built-in wardrobe in main bedroom

A brand new vanity basin in bathroom











TO SEE MORE YOU NEED TO INSPECT THE PLACE.
OUR PHONE NUMBER IS 3397 9614
Call us if you are interested. -------------------------------------


The following are some other links to our internet articles
Some helpful links here under







Sunday, October 23, 2016

Coorparoo unit for rent

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
-
Welcome to our blog, affordablerentals
and this post, Coorparoo unit for rent
-
Coorparoo unit for rent
-
There is one unit for rent, in this block of 5 units. There are more picture at the bottom of the blog to show you what we have. available now.

Available now

Coorparoo unit for rent


Coorparoo, 2-bedroom flat for rent available from 25 of October 2016 

Clean 2 bedrooms flat for rent, $300.00 P.W.

Location; flat 2- 28 Hipwood Avenue Coorparoo Brisbane

Initial cost, 2 weeks rent + 4 weeks for bond

Minimum 3 months’ lease

Qualified tenants have to sign a minimum 3 months Rental Agreement

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For inspection call Frank Tel. 3397 9614

Open for inspection, Saturday between 9.30 AM to 10.30 AM

Or visit our site any time you want at; 28- Hipwood Avenue Coorparoo and if you like what you see, then you can call Frank to make an appointment, Tel. No: 3397 9614;

Or you can email us at, hipwoodac@gmail.com

This is our blog; http://affordablerentals.blogspot.com/

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The flat for rent is the fist entry door on the landing.








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The same as above, seen from a different angle.









A brand new vanity basin in bathroom










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Upright gas stove two years old. Kitchen and cupboards are okay.









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View of kitchen and other stuff from lounge room.









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Laundry under the building, and car port as well.










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Entry door and lounge room









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Built-in wardrobes in main bedroom.












TO SEE MORE YOU NEED TO INSPECT THE PLACE.
OUR PHONE NUMBER IS 3397 9614
Call us if you are interested.
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The following are some other links to our internet articles
Some helpful links here under





Yola.com



Thursday, July 14, 2016

Stones Corner unit for rent

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THEREIN TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.
-
Welcome to our blog, affordable rentals
and this post, Stones Corner
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Stones Corner unit for rent
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The unit for rent is situated on first floor of this building, as seen from Knowsley St Greenslopes.








Stones Corner unit for rent
This is one of the best location in Brisbane
Stones Corner: Clean 2-bedroom unit with built-in robes, large lounge, kitchen and dining room
Location; 5/127 Old Cleveland Road Stones Corner.
Close to all amenities, bus at door, short walk to shops, Hotel and café.
Cost $350.00 PW. Initial cost 2 weeks rent plus bond
For more information call Tel 3397 9614

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Hereunder are some photos of the property


common entry to units
lounge room 







and


dining room




and


kitchen






and
main bedroom built-in







and

wardrobe in second bedroom