Had units for a few years, never again under any circumstances. No real worries while our son was living in the same town, he was pretty handy and would fix most issues quickly if there was one. He moved interstate and our “fun” started. Absolutely useless and hopeless management agents, only thing they were good at was taking their commission regularly and this was a number of them over a few years with changing agents on an almost yearly time frame because of non performance. We re did two units, new furniture through out, not top of the range but very liveable. Twelve months later we did an inspection ourselves, non of our furniture there, old fridges I would not use as a bar fridge in the shed, beds gone and old cheap ones in place and the agent had the hide to say it was our fault, we did not inspect often enough!!! Rent not paid on one for 6 months and we were not told until we chased why no deposits? Paid for replacement light globes monthly, the tenants must have eaten them because we know there were not inspections done and the agents did not correspond with the tenants. What the hell were we paying for?? Broken windows not reported to me, kicked in doors, it went on and on. Finally rang a mate in the sales game and said “just sell them all” . Never again would we consider rental properties managed by agents where we were not close to keep an eye on them and even then I doubt we would consider investments in residential property. Industrial sheds only and tenant pays all outgoings and virtually nothing to damage.
When my Father died in Newport, NSW, I rented out his flat to tenants. I tried to do it on my own at first, but got called out every time something didn’t work. I asked the tenants to tell the body corporate that there were defects in the community sewerage etc, but they kept ringing me to say it was my problem. The first tenants ended up fighting with their boy friends, and breaking doors and windows in the process. On 3 occasions, the neighbours had to call the police. After that, I handed the rentals to a local agent.
Their first tenant was from overseas, and he obviously loved curry. Despite the agent being obliged to inspect the property on a regular basis, this mostly didn’t happen.
After the tenant failed to pay the rent for 3 successive months, he left without telling anyone. On our inspection, we found the carpet had been ruined from dripping curry between the kitchen and the dining room over the years. We had to replace the carpet in every room, because the cleaning people were unable to get rid of the stains.
We sold the property, and vowed never to buy a rental property again.
Michael Barnett.
Looks like the ABC is doing a similar story. They’re asking for rental horror stories via https://www.facebook.com/abcnews.au/photos/a.134629924987.132856.72924719987/10156238739049988/?type=3&theater.
In an update to our own situation, our new house was recently rained on and is leaking in various places. We emailed the real estate in Northern Tassie (we’re in Southern Tassie) and got a phone call from someone in a different real estate in Southern Tassie. Apparently the landlady has decided to move our lease on to a real estate agent that is closer to the property that we’re renting. So we’re currently in Limbo until everything’s sorted out. Hopefully the new agent will be friendly and won’t treat us with contempt like the last time this happened to us years ago. See my previous comment for details of that one.
Soooooo… after a week or so of contacting a new real estate agent (Harcourts in Devonport) concerning repairs because we were told to start contacting them by the old agent (O2 Property in Launceston), and actually having the new agent try and sort some things out for us, I thought, “Hang on… we’re still paying rent to the old real estate agent and the new one hasn’t asked for any money at all”. So yesterday I queried it and the new agent said that she had no idea what was going on, but that we still had to pay rent to the old agent, even though the old agent had told us that they were no longer our agent about a week ago. She said she’d get back to me before the day was out. Didn’t happen though.
Today we got a call from a third agent (Petrusma Property, no idea which office location yet) who said they were now in charge and we needed to stop all rental payments to the original agent. They had no knowledge of what was happening with the second agent. He was then going to send me an email with account details so we could start paying rent to the new account, but never actually sent the email. Our rent is due on Monday, but we don’t have any account details to pay them to. So it’s going to be a matter of holding onto the rent until we can pay it, and also ensuring that the rent we have already paid up front to the old agent, which is a few weeks in front, actually gets counted towards the rent we’ll be paying to the new account so we’ll still be a few weeks in front. We also have a current lease that still has about 11 months left on it via the first agent, so will we need to negotiate a new lease with the new agent??? This is ridiculously complicated until we get more info from the new agent.
The second agent also let slip that whenever she had to contact the landlady, the landlady would then be shirty with her, so because we’re asking for repairs, as per the law requirements in Tassie, there’s a good chance our lease won’t be offered for renewal. We’ve already moved 4 times in the past 6 years. Once to get out of public housing because they couldn’t offer us a house big enough for our family size. Then again when we needed an extra bedroom. Then again when the lease wasn’t offered for renewal because the landlady didn’t want to bother paying to maintain the property. Then again because the landlady decided she wanted to sell and we were thus not offered a renew option on yet another lease. We’re tired of moving house when we always pay our rent in front and before it’s due and keep the houses in immaculate condition. Getting told to move out simply because owners don’t want to be responsible for things they are legally required to fix, things that actually needed fixing before we moved in, is becoming the norm unfortunately. Apart from the hassle of trying to find a new house that’s big enough for our needs every 12 months or so, we also have the added burden of the financial cost of moving house all the time.
Hi @NubglummerySnr,
I realise this isn’t your state nor a solution for the immediate predicament, but hopefully this gives some hope - a step in the right direction.
Thanks. Our leases usually go for 6 or 12 months, but the lease for our current house is for 13 months because the landowner wanted to make sure it wasn’t the middle of Christmas again when the lease was up in case she needed to find new tenants for one reason or another. We had similar with the last house. 6 months to start with, then instead of getting a 12 month lease for the renewal as previously mentioned to us, we got an 8 month lease for the same reason.
So the new real estate sent an email today on how to pay rent, but they sent us details for paying via BPay. We always use Centrepay though, so we now have to wait for our new rent person to get back to the office tomorrow so we can get the Centrepay details we need to sort it out.
Some good news though. They’ve confirmed that our rent is still paid up in front as per where we had it with the old real estate, so we don’t need to fork out extra to get back in front.
Also, the landlady has apparently got a new investment property that she’ll be having the maintenance man do up for her. This means he had to come by today to take all the paint and things that have been locked away in our storage area to take to her new property. So we’ve finally had the lock removed and can use the storage area for our own needs such as somewhere to put the Christmas tree when it’s not Christmas time. He’s also measured up the door frame downstairs that we asked to have a door attached to and will apparently be coming back next week to do all the repairs that need to happen. Only took 3 months for her to decide to approve it all. 
Never would I, as a landlord, ever have a lease for more than 12 months, so much could happen in that time, selling up could be one of those, ill health, etc. Tenants would have to prove ‘their worth’ for twelve months even…so many dodgy tenants buggering the system up for genuine good tenants, that’s the truth…sorry to all those of you whom are great tenants…the dodgy dudes are wrecking it for you…:[
In the further continuing saga of our current rental situation, see previous posts for details, after the handyman came and measured the door frame, then removed all the junk he’d left behind in the storage area of the house, 10 or 11 days ago, he never actually bothered to come back to do any of the repairs or fit a door to the frame as promised. We’re also still waiting on the landlady to contact our local council so we can get a decent sized wheelie bin for ourselves too, even though we’re happy to pay for the extra cost involved. In the meantime we had a phone call from the company that looks after maintenance for the smoke alarms in the house. Only problem was, they were under contract from the old real estate, which is no longer in charge of our property, so they had to call the old agent to find out what’s going on before getting back to us about it. Guess what? No one ever got back to us about it.
If anyone would like to share their story on the ABC, Radio National is currently looking to hear about your thoughts on housing affordability.
An audit of more than 300 random estate agents by NSW Fair Trading has found one-in-five is practising with out-of-date qualifications.
Had five units, purchased over time as I believe in spreading the financial risk. Every cheque received had something taken out for repairs, replacing light globes was very regular one, or some other “charge” Real estate agents are glorified car salesmen or politicians, all talk with a forked tongue. Finally cracked a wobbly and sold the lot and would never contemplate residential properties ever again. Quite happy now collecting regular dividend cheques from a variety of companies and sleep well at night,
Same here, moved interstate - my experience was the tenant didn’t abide by a number of the conditions and were frequently late in paying rent. I gave them a few months notice to leave so the house could be sold, granted an extension when asked - then found the house had been badly treated and didn’t get the rent for the extension that had been granted. They lost their bond, which went a fraction of the way towards repairs. Got a positive judgement from the tribunal but the debt collector couldn’t get the cash - they were living in a nearby town under a different name, I managed to track them down. Later found the tenant had been taken to court for fraud and corporate mismanagement by the federal government - got a fine but essentially got away with it … and millions of dollars missing. Could almost write a novel, but nobody would believe it 
Community legal service Westjustice has highlighted that renters might not be covered by insurance in the event of damage to a landlord’s property:
I had a bad experience when inquiring by online form and phone message about a rental property a Harcourts Caloundra in Queensland that we were very keen to view. A day or so later (actually 2 days) there had been zero response so I put a one star review on Google Review. Well that unleashed a tirade of abuse and insults from the Owner and Principal of the agency (who also happened to be the owner of the property) and he was somehow able to have my Google Review removed. So I put another review of his facebook page that was also removed.
At 8.13pm on 26 September 2019 the Owner emailed the following insults to me to accompany insults he had previously delivered.
“You are a pathetic individual and a bankrupt fool. You have nothing to offer the world other than your aggression and irrational argument you will die a lonely man. That itself is incredible satisfaction”.
I was so annoyed by this behaviour and the management at Harcourts Australia giving me the virtual finger, when they publish such glowing values about themselves, I decided to award this bunch with one of my free websites.
Read all about it at: Harcourts Rentals. or Harcourts Report or Harcourts Caloundra.
No way would we want to rent from this Lunatic Landlord.
Is this departure from published representations about Values and Philosophy, a contravention of the ACL?
Have you tried posting on ProductReview where your post cannot be removed by anyone else.
Whilst there is only one of the 263 reviews for Harcourts which specifically mentions Harcourts Caloundra, some 211 1-star reviews from a total of 263 reviews for Harcourts pretty much leaves little doubt regarding just what sort of organisation they wre.
Yes thanks Fred123, I forgot to mention my post on Product Review https://www.productreview.com.au/reviews/08c16f0c-df5d-40b6-a798-0b7e4876d554
I am progressively linking the remaining couple of hundred 1 star reviews on PR to my website as listed above.
Wow, sounds like it is lucky you didn’t become involved @gordonc. I’ve shared your experience with our campaigns team working on rental issues.
Thanks Brendan, just did a legal opinion at:
It is not just big name/big brand real estate agents who leave a lot to be desired.
A local yokel persisted in leaving a large metal sandwich board on the roundabout at the bottom of our street for the last couple of months.
The board was an Open Home sign with an arrow pointing up the street despite this character not having any such listing other than some residual unsold blocks of land from the subdivision some 20- odd years ago.
I finally complained to our Council a couple of weeks ago about this behaviour of treating the city and residents with contempt, and last week Council lawnmowing staff had to actually move the board so as to mow the roundabout.
I called again today and the sign has been confiscated .
Whilst this “agent” apparently does not seem to need to actually have a website or Facebook page. their Google reviews seem to adquately cover everything, as if one ignores the one questionable 5-star review, it leaves the remaining four 1-star reviews mirroring my impression of this 'business".
