What is the average homestay fee in Australia?
Average fee is a good indicator for both homestay seekers and homstay hosts to judge if your homestay fee is overpriced or under priced. In Australia, normally homestay fee is charged on weekly basis, majority of the homestay fee includes all the household expenses like rent, bills, internet and meals.
According to our research, the average homestay fee in Australia are as follows: Adelaide $217, Brisbane $219, Cains $234, Canberra 243, Gold Coast: $229, Hobart:$177, Melbourne:$245, Perth:$235, Sydney:$260. As you can Hobart has the cheapest homestay fee while Sydney has the most expensive homestay fee. This is inline with the living costs in these two cities.
What are the benefits of choosing homestay accommodation?
There are a lot of benefits of choosing homestay accommodation. If you are a traveler and want to experience the real local life, it is a fantastic option to staying with a local family. They are local and they have a lot of local knowledge about their city. They can show you authentic food, culture and unknown scenarios. If you add up the fees of hotels or even backpacker inns, transport, tour guide, actually homestay fee is quite cheap.
For international students, homestay is a very good student accommodation choice. One reason is you learn the local language very quickly because you have such a fantastic environment to practice your English. A lot of words and their really meanings you really don’t know until you use them with local people.
In my case, I stayed with my homestay family for 3.5 years when I first came here as a student. My English was very broken in terms of speaking. My homestay family speak lower to me so I can pick up their words. Also they taught me new words I didn’t know during our conversation. I kept a little notebook myself and wrote down new words I didn’t know. My English was improved very quickly, which was great help for my study.
On the other hand, host family normally provide meals for the student. This is a huge benefit for young student. Imagine a young student never been to Australia before and never cook at home before. All of sudden, they need to come here to shop, cook and study. It is a huge challenge for them. Homestay will not only give them a peace of mind but also will give their parents peace of mind.
What are the benefits to host homestay?
No doubt that there are more and more Aussie families are becoming homestay hosts because they see a lot of benefits there. First look at the money side, you rent out a room and charge between $200-$250 a week, which will bring you more than 10k a year. This is a big tick in terms of financial benefit.
On the other hand, you learn different culture by living with people around the world. If you have children, you don’t need to tech them what language Brazilian people speak from the book, just get them to talk to them face to face. So language leaning is a benefit from homestay host prospective.
For some older hosts, their children have moved out or moved to oversea. The house becomes very quiet and they are feeling a bt lonely. Having a student with them just like having their children back. If the old couple are not in good heal condition, the students can keep an eye on them as well, That will be a great relief for the host family.
You an use this form to submit your homestay host details.
How to choose host family?
This website gives you a very good starting point, which is the price. But price is only one thing. You need to contact the host family to clarify what is the price includes and what other extra costs will expect to avoid argument. Transport arrangement normally not included in the price, but some nice hosts can offer free airport pick up or even take you to school for free, so confirm it before you leave your home country.
If you are already in Australia, having a face to face meeting will be a good choice or you can do it via Skpe to just get a feeling how the family looks like. Always ask questions like how many people living in the house, what language spoken in the house etc to get a feeling of the family. English speaking family is always preferred. Hosts living in the local city are also preferred.
How to choose homestay seekers?
Understanding home seekers’ culture is very important. Culture things like religion, food and living habit. Ask questions like “Are you a smoker?”. This is not an offending question, Some hosts prefer non smokers. Also make sure to ask if the homestay seekers are vegetarian. If the homestay seek is very vegetarian but the host is not. Cooking could be very tricky. Some people with religion don’t eat pork and if you are pork lover as a host, you have to watch out.
Another thing to consider is if you can handle people with disabilities. If you have a two storey townhouse, it could be a problem for people with walking disability.
What you should use this website’s service?
We are an Australian website. It is very easy to tell if it is an Australian website or not by looking at the domain name. If it ends with au which stands for Australia, it is an Australian website. Not everyone can register Australian domain, you need an Australian Business Number. The website is run by Australian people. Kelly Chan, founder of this website, has a lot of homestay experience. She can help you from both homestay seekers and homestay hosts prospective.
