goldcoastblue

Renting, a subject dear to my heart and one everyone will need to do, well almost most,

I am in conflict and going through RTA and a independent party to solve outstanding monies with regards Bond and quite frankly a P*SS poor agent and a bitch of a landlady, which I am also complaining about to the office of fair trading, regarding both.

I am not writing this to bitch against landlords infact I want them to add to the advice from their prospective...

As a ex-tennant I want to give some tips:

Do the Entry Report
Take Pictures of everything and provide these to the agent for the file
See the cleaning report prior to your entry
Report all anamolies immediately, if your unhappy do it straight away and in writing, make two copies and file them.
Ensure the agent does the routine inspections, this is a chance for you to point out things too, before matters get forgotten
Get written reciepts for every week you are there
Check the special conditions part of the contract
Remember any penalties for breaking a lease, and any arrangement you make get it in writing
Do the exit report with the agent
Get 3 quotes for the work, cleaning etc and discuss this with the agent, so its final, and there is no inflation of costs or favouritsm with certain cleaning agents.
Agree if this is to be taken from your bond
Forms
Make sure the agent gives you the correct documentation if they or any other person intends to come around, 24hour notice, its your quiet time they should respect it.
ALSO REMEMBER THE AGENT REPRESENTS THE LANDLORD NOT YOU AS THE TENNANT.

GET THE TENNANTS GUIDE for advice and accurate notes.

As anybody landlord or tennant got any horror stories to spill so we tennants can be prepared.

nanci

I would back goldcoastblue on this 100%, make sure you have everything in writing in particular, because telephone conversations can be disputed and cover your back at all times.

Landlords and agents are a breed apart and are only interested in your money. The tenants association are brilliant and we found them very helpful more than once during our tenancy.

I'm sure not everyone has bad experiences, but it is always better to be safe than sorry.

I was certainly relieved when we got our bond money back!

NKSK version 2

This is all good advice.

I'd like to reinforce the need to be extra careful when dealing with real estate agents. I haven't met one as yet who could be described as professional.

Insist that you accompany them on their exit inspection. We put a lot of work into making our house spotless and the agent then said that they would visit a few days later. I asked whose responsibility any damage caused in the interim would be? etc etc

Property condition reports can be woeful - often the agents do just a superficial inspection knowing that you as the tenant will have to pay for anything they've missed from your bond.

One piece of advice that I'd like to pass on:

When you move in, spend a few hours doing the property report and note down every discrepancy. (e.g. Are the carpets clean or have they just been vacuumed?) then photocopy the report but also write a covering letter which states categorically that there are numerous discrepancies and it is clear that a thorough inspection has not been done. It has been impossible to note down and photograph every single discrepancy but you would like the agent to revisit the property within the next few days for an another inspection - with you present - so that a more accurate report can be drawn up.

Most of them are far too lazy to do anything about that and will just ignore the letter. But if you arrive at a bond dispute and you can show the 'judge' your letter and that the agent never turned up then you should be in a very strong position.


Treat real estate agents as scam merchants who are always looking to shaft you. You won't go far wrong.

ABCDiamond

On the other side of the coin........

The Bond Money isn't enough !!!!

We have just had to evict a tenant, for non payment of rent. We had to go to court: The court said, allow them 4 weeks to pay up, they didn't pay, so back to court etc.

End result....... 3 months of non paid rent, and then we are allowed to evict them. Whether we can afford pay the mortgage on the property, without incoming rent, is immaterial to the court.

Now we have to go bacjk to court to try to get them to pay, if we can find them !!

Can you tell I'm not very happy with tenants at the moment

goldcoastblue

Agree ABC,

2 sided coin, my wife is in real estate, and the comment she passed on was its amazing how many real estate agents,landlords and tennants dont know the rules and generally what they are doing!!!!

not meaning you, and this is why it all leads to a mess, thus why i am in talks with the office of fair trading, regarding ethical standards.

I am also sure there was sense of because i am a pommie new to the country,i cant put on here exactly what went on, but some of the property managers i have spoke to are actually amazed....

NKSK version 2

I sympathise (and empathise as we are landlords of a property in the UK) with your situation but there are some other considerations:

1. If I treated every student in the way that the one real pain in the backside student deserved to be treated, parents (some of which may be real estate agents) would immediately complain (and rightly so); the same scenario should apply to real estate agents. They should be professional enough to cope with problem tenants and not be influenced in their dealings with everyone else.

2. I have sympathy for those landlords whose sole house is rented out to poor tenants but little sympathy for multiple property landlords who experience problems. That's the risk of the investment.

NKSK version 2

[QUOTE=goldcoastblue]
I am also sure there was sense of because i am a pommie new to the country,QUOTE]

When I insisted that I was present in the agents' final inspection, the only comment I received from the agent was "Have you rented in WA before?"
In other words "That's not how we do things here"

When she visited the house she made a point of saying that the real estate system was much more advanced in Australia than in the UK.

Didn't say this to her but I felt like saying that in my experience it was like saying that a sh*t is more advanced than a turd. But the UK had it (just).

Pomster

Our first rental property was managed by some idiot estate agents who didn't care as long as we paid.

As we were moving out the place was cleaner than when we moved in...but they claimed we had damaged the carpets. The 'black marks' we noted on the condition report were in fact cigarette burns and the agent claimed black marks and fag burns were completely different- and wanted us to buy new carpet for the whole house. The carpet cleaning man (who was fab) told us the carpet was at least 15 years old.

Anyway the other half knew that Victorian rules say only one bond can be held per property at a time. So if they did not release the bond, they could not re-let... we said we were happy to go to a tribunal. Bond was returned 2 days later.

The next property we were so much wiser and everything was a lot easier!

NickyP

That is good to know as we have marks on the carpet etc here and although we have noted them on the report I am waiting to see whether we will get charged when we leave.
Nicky

NKSK version 2

Stand your ground. Many real estate agents are bullies and rely on people just caving in. Don't cave in and if you feel that you're about to, say you'll call them back after you've obtained legal advice.

NickyP

Thanks we rented in Belgium which is known for screwing the rentors out of their bond, however although we were expecting to have problems there were none. We had the place cleaned prior to leaving and did all we could to ensure that we looked after the place while there and it worked out OK in the end and we were talking about potentially a lot of money as they use 3 months money for a bond there :scared: .
I am hoping that this will be OK as we are renting from a guy who has just split from his OH and is using the time to get his finances straight before deciding what to do next. He had kids and we have kids so the place is very much a lived in family home. We took the photos and made notes of everything, I know that he would like us to buy the place off him but the neighbours are awful so no chance .
It is good to know the rules though as our agents are fairly useless and he prefers us to go through him directly if possible, I wouldn't put it past them to try to justify their fee through screwing us out of our bond money.
Nicky

NKSK version 2

We were lucky in our last house - great landlord who lived very close and thought the real estate agents were as useless as we did.

steve`o

i know exactly where your coming from
we rented out out a house with similar problems
we had tossers for tenants and after twelve months the rent stopped ( they had gone on the social and couldn't be ar*ed walking down to the social offices to sign a form )
it took four months to get to court where they gave me an eviction order which gave them another month to leave
( they didnt ) when i called the courts again i was told to go back to court for a bailiffs order ( could take another month ) all the time the cheeky fu*fers were staying there rent free )

in the end i had to resort to drastic measures ( it was legal just i checked with a friend in the police first )

i went round to the property, carefully removed all their gear from the kitchen and bathroom ( they called the police ) but before the police could arrive i had smashed all the kitchen units and bathroom to bits and moved it all into the rear yard

the police came the tenant told them that i had come into the property and smashed up the kitchen and bathroom
i told the coppers that i`d had to take them out as they were old and potentially dangerous and could have harmed the tenants that along with the court order which the tenants had ignored - the police told the tenants that there was nothing that they could do as i hadn't damaged anything of the tenants stuff only my own property.

the cheeky fuc*ers then said that they still wouldn't move !
my reply in front of the police was i think the windows need replacing as they look dangerous and could cause you harm i`ll take them all out today !

net result they packed up on the spot an *****ed off leaving all their sh*te for me to remove

an expensive lesson was learned

be careful very careful who you let rent your property as the law in the UK is very biased towards the tenant

rant over feel much better now

NickyP

I do feel for you, I used to work in mortgage collections and the majority of cases that I dealt with where you really felt for the owners were like yours. I heard and saw so many horror stories that I would NEVER own an investment property in the UK and would be highly dubious about owning one here.
The law is an arse in a lot of cases where property is concerned it seems to protect the people who have no intention of paying a penny, but does very little for the people that really need it.
Nicky

steve`o

thanks for your concern
but dont get me wrong there were positives as well
we rented this property out for eight years with little or no problems aside for the nightmare tenants

and we have recently sold the property for more than double what we paid for it so as an investment it was way way better than any bank or building society


regards Steve