Better get yourselves comfy. This could take a while.
Over the years I’ve had one house destroy itself, a terminated lease, and various notices to vacate the premises after the lease expires. In all cases we paid our rent on time, didn’t damage anything and kept the yards looking respectable.
The first incident was about 15 years ago. I was living in Orange NSW with my then partner and our young children. At the time we were living in a NSW Housing Dept property.
The Dept had recently sent some painters around to do the inside of the house, who almost burnt it down after smoking on the property when we weren’t looking and then walking a still lit cigarette butt onto a tarp on the laundry floor which subsequently caught fire. They also used our bedroom curtains to cover up our double bed, and as a result got them spattered with lots of paint. As compensation we were handed the ugliest and loudest, orange and red striped curtains that the painters could find.
Not long afterwards, the Dept decided that our hot water service in the roof was outdated, so they sent some plumbers around to put a new hot water service in the backyard. When all this was finally over we took a 2 week trip to Queensland to visit a friend during school holidays. When we got back the house was an indoor swimming pool and all our belongings had been destroyed. Apparently our neighbour had noticed a large volume of water gushing out of a gap in our wall near the roof, but he didn’t actually do anything about it until it had been gushing out for about 3 days. He then decided it might he an idea to turn the water off for us. By this time the ceiling had enough damage done to it that it eventually caved in and the plumbing in the roof crashed down through our hallway closet which had quite a lot of irreplaceable photos and home movies stored in it.
The dept refused to offer us any compensation and even went as far as sending us a bill for the cost of asbestos removal before they could demolish the place. We managed to get that bill wiped from our account at least. We were told that the housing officer in charge of our area had been sacked and should never have sent us the bill to start with.
We decided to move to Queensland and ended up in a private rental through a very nice real estate in Nambour.
After a year, the real estate changed ownership and although we had always paid our rent on time, made sure the place was spotless for routine inspections and always looked after the place, the new owners treated us like we were vermin scum. They even forced us to pay extra on top of our regular rent for the cost of the rent books that we had to use in order to pay the rent at their bank.
During the changeover, we were already about six weeks in front with our rent, but they decided that seeing as we had paid this to the previous real estate owner then that was no longer to be taken into consideration and they started to send us notices that we were now behind in the rent. We eventually had to go to the bank and have them validate that our previous rent receipts were legitimate and the new real estate owners reluctantly adjusted their records.
The house we were renting came with a very large shed in the backyard, almost big enough to be a house itself. It was a good play area for our kids. We then got a letter to say that the owners of the house had arrived back in Australia after their world trip had to be cut short due to financial difficulties and that workmen would arrive shortly to put a wall up inside the shed so they could store their belongings in there. The wall went up and we ended up with less than a quarter of the space we started with. On top of that the house owners then started making frequent trips to the shed, through our backyard, unannounced, and they eventually put a padlock on it so that we couldn’t even access our own belongings that were stored in what little space we had left. A space that the house owners had to walk through to get to their own newly created space.
We still had 3 months left on our renewed 12 month lease when the owners decided they wanted to move into the house themselves, which meant the real estate needed a reason to evict us, instead of just waiting for the lease to expire. A routine inspection was organised and the real estate went over the house with a fine tooth comb.
At first the woman doing the inspection tried to tell us that the oven was filthy. We had just cleaned the thing and had to point out that it was in better condition now than when we had moved in, and had to produce the condition report to prove it. She then started complaining about a spider web on the wall, which didn’t exist. She just about had her face pressed up against the wall to see the thing, which we could not see at all.
A few days later we had a notice that said we had leaves on the ground in the backyard, spiderwebs all over the walls and a filthy oven and that they’d be back in a week to see that we’d fixed it. The backyard was more or less a forest of very large and very old trees which were dropping quite a lot of leaves due to it being autumn. The grass was cut and we’d not long raked the leaves up, so what leaves there were had fallen that day.
We knew that they were looking for an excuse to get rid of us before the lease had expired so we went to the tenancy tribunal and they said it would be a waste of their resources fighting this one because the lease was due to expire soon anyway and they would just choose not to renew it. They said the best we could do would be to find somewhere else to live as soon as possible.
When the real estate woman returned a week later, she had another woman with her, no doubt to be a “witness” to back up whatever bullcrap she was going to put in her records about us. I had my own backup of having a video camera to record everything as proof to show that whatever they’d decide to say was wrong with the place was actually nothing but grubby lies.
No matter how much they demanded that I turn the camera off, I left it on. A few days later we got our eviction notice because a few leaves had fallen into the backyard again. When we did go, we had to move back to NSW and stay at a relatives place until we could get another Housing Dept place because the real estate would not give us a good reference, even though we always paid our rent on time, kept the house clean and in good repair, and apart from the handful of leaves they found, kept the grounds neat and tidy.
They even managed to keep our bond money saying that we’d left the place filthy, even though we washed and scrubbed everything in order to get our bond money back. It was especially hard on our boys because they’d all been diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum about 6 months earlier and we’d established some really good special needs classes at the local school, including some early intervention classes which were really helping them to cope with the world. All of their routines were thrown out the window, which at those ages can be devastating for a persononthe Autism Spectrum. The house owners and the new real estate agent owners just didn’t care.
Fast forward to 2010(ish) and I’m now living with my new partner in Hobart, her two children and my eldest boy. A very large crack appeared in the door frame of one of the bedrooms which was right next to the bathroom.
Apparently the pipes had started leaking in the wall and the wood was beginning to warp. The real estate sent a handyman who told them that nothing could be done without ripping the wall out to get at the pipe and even then, that might not be what the problem was. It could be a leak in the roof.
Anyway, the house owner and the real estate decided for one reason or another that we’d just have to live with the gaps. Of course this caused an awfully large amount of condensation in both the bathroom and the bedroom during winter and no matter how much we tried, we couldn’t control the mould that was beginning to take over around the gaps and also in the ceiling of both rooms.
We eventually found ourselves needing a larger house after we ended up with 2 of my boys in our care. We couldn’t have the boys sharing a room as their Autism was making it difficult for them to be in each other’s personal space so much. At least we got glowing references this time.
The real estate did try and claim our bond money due to the mould problem until I reminded them that it was only mouldy due to their own lack of action after we had repeatedly told them about the problems with the gaps. They did force us to pay $60 to have someone come and try to remove what we couldn’t though before they’d sign the papers to release the bond to us.
The next house had a granny flat on the bottom floor, so it was perfect for my partner’s eldest son who is an adult on the Autism Spectrum. It was in a bad state of repair though and we had to give it a good clean out before he could use it. We had told the real estate that we would be placing our eldest boy in the flat area while the rest of us lived upstairs in the house before we signed the lease.
One morning our neighbour told us that the lady who owned our house was talking to him as she walked by (unannounced), and that she was horrified when he told her that we had our eldest boy (in his 20s) living in the flat because apparently it was supposes to be a rumpus area only. This was news to us and to the real estate agent who told us she could not dictate what each room was to be used for on the property.
She was also horrified that we used the indoor stairs to get from the flat to the house. The real estate turned up the next week with amendments to our lease which stated that we were not allowed to use the internal stairs, we had to keep the door at the top of the internal stairs locked at all times, and that the oven and fireplace in the downstairs flat were not to be used. We didn’t want to jeopardise our chances of having the lease renewed so reluctantly agreed.
Over the course of the next 12 months, repairs were required. One of the upstairs bedrooms ended up with a fizzling light socket and the electrician decided that the wiring in the house was old and dangerous and recommended that the entire house be rewired. The roof in the garage leaked and looked as if it was about to collapse. Other problems involved power points and lights failing to work after a time, even after changing the bulbs, and nothing ever got fixed.
Eventually, we were given a notice to vacate when the lease expired to let the owner do all the repairs at once and completely renovate the downstairs flar. The real estate was absolutely disgusted that the house owner would treat such excellent tenants in this manner. We got glowing references and found a new house quite quickly. At least we had permission to move out early without facing any penalties for breaking what was left of the lease.
Within a week the old house was back up for rent via a different real estate and had new tenants very soon afterwards. There was no way that they had time to do all the repairs and renovations that were supposed to be the reason behind why we didn’t get our lease renewed. In fact, the house was put up for sale a year later and from the photos supplied with the online listing, it was pretty much in the same condition that it was in when we moved out.
So, onto our next house. We had no issues with this one at all and were told when we signed the lease that the owner was an investment property owner who just wanted tenants he could trust to look after the place so he could keep renewing the lease for as long as they wanted to stay, so it was very disappointing when we were three quarters of the way through our lease that a for sale sign was placed in the street next to our driveway.
The owner wanted to sell, so our lease would not be renewed at all. We were also informed that the owner would not let us break the lease early if we found a new house because she was relying on the income from us. We were also informed that there would be daily open houses, which we knew we had the right to refuse. We did have to put up with one person a day coming to look through the house, as was allowed by law providing we had adequate written notice. Again we got good references, so we eventually found the house we are currently renting, which has changed real estates twice since we moved in about 18 months ago.
We did have to pay for repairs to a couple of holes in the wall in the old house that we didn’t know about before we could get our bond back though. Pretty sure it was damaged after we moved out by someone coming to look at the house as a potential buyer. After we’d moved, the owner of the old house started to panic as she still didn’t have a buyer and no longer had any rent coming in and she actually had the real estate call us to see if we were interested in signing a new lease AFTER we’d moved out and got lumped with a repair bill for something we didn’t do.
Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in this house for as long as possible. It’s a pain having to keep moving every few years.
