Dear Lifehacker, What can I do about my current landlord arranging viewings for property all the time? My partner and I decided not to renew our lease and have given the landlord more than one month’s notice. The landlord has since started organising viewings for anyone that wants one. I am constantly called to say she is hosting another viewing in ’24 hours’. It’s really starting to annoy my partner who works from home.
Is there any way I can get her to reduce the number of viewings she arranges? I have asked politely but she is more interested in making sure she finds someone else than our concerns. Thanks, Disrupted Renter
Rental picture from Shutterstock
Dear DR,
While renters are entitled to reasonable peace, comfort and privacy in their use of the premises, agents and landlords are still authorised to enter if they want to show the property to prospective tenants. In most Australian states and territories, the property owner is required to give the tenant at least 24 hours notice. Sundays, public holidays and any time before 8am or after 6pm are usually prohibited unless permission has been granted by the tenant.
There are also rules in place about the number of showings that are allowed in a given month, but these can be pretty slippery — in NSW, for example, property viewings are limited to a ‘reasonable’ number of times. However, the law doesn’t specify what ‘reasonable’ actually means.
If you feel that the frequency of property viewings is unacceptable, you can apply to the tenancy tribunal or other relevant department in your state for an order to limit the days and times on which the landlord can show the premises.
Here are some links to the relevant departments in each state, as well as the tenants’ unions organisations:
- NSW: NSW Fair Trading, Tenants NSW
- Victoria: Consumer Affairs Victoria, Tenants Union Of Victoria
- Queensland: Residential Tenancies Authority, Tenants’ Union Of Queensland
- WA: Department Of Commerce, Tenants Advice Service
- SA: SA.gov.au, Tenants Information And Adovacy Service
- Tasmania: Consumer Affairs And Fair Trading, Tenants’ Union Of Tasmania
- NT: Consumer Affairs, Tenants’ Advice Service
- ACT: ACT Government, Tenants’ Union Of ACT
Obviously, the landlord isn’t going to like this one bit and there’s a fair chance the relationship will completely deteriorate. This could lead to repercussions when you eventually move out, such as accusations of minor property damage or demands that the premises be repeatedly re-cleaned.
In other words, you should probably only go down this path if the number of viewings is truly unbearable. Otherwise, suck it up and invest your energies in finding a new place to live instead.
Alternatively, you could try hitting back at the landlord by ensuring the place looks like a pigsty whenever prospective tenants come over. Unless there’s been a deduction to your rent or some other official agreement, you’re in no way obligated to keep the property’s interior tidy during a viewing — so go all out with dirty dishes, worn clothes, pizza boxes and empty beer cans. Passive-aggressive revenge is often the sweetest.
Cheers
Lifehacker
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Comments
42 responses to “Ask LH: Can I Stop My Landlord Constantly Organising Property Viewings?”
Don’t be ridiculous, you’re a renter, you have no rights. In the eyes of the government and the law you’re somewhere between an asylum seeker and a junkie.
I’m happy that housing was such a large topic during the last election…. /s
Either your sarcasm was missed or not appreciated – I for one did appreciate it and agree – if you work and rent you’re essentially a wage-slave for a landLORD (can’t believe we still use the word Lord – do we use it anywhere else?).
Cost of rental accom is ridiculous and negative gearing needs to be abolished.
I don’t know about ‘lord’ specifically, but judges are required to be referred to by specific archaic titles they don’t necessarily deserve. Such as ‘your honour’.
I’m not sure of any other profession which you can be jailed for regarding with contempt. People exhibit contempt for garbos, nurses, teachers, and cops all the time, but I’d suggest you’d notice the deterioration of society MUCH faster if they were to stop work a month, than you would if judges went on strike.
(Why, if judges went on strike or decided to stop doing their jobs properly, we might have people waiting in jails for unreasonable periods of time without trial, criminals going free on technicalities, violent clubbers getting off with a slap on the wrist, pubs being held responsible for drunks being idiots outside on the street, unrepentant sex offenders released into society, or extreme sentencing for the mentally ill/homeless/minority-race citizens, or white collar criminals – who ruin dozens, hundreds, or thousands more lives than any violent offender – being punished with little to no jail time and fines. …Ohwait.)
sure but if they take away negative gearing they also need to abolish or reduce stamp duty, land tax, capital gains tax, development fees.
You have no idea how heavily swayed towards tenants rights the rental laws are.
As someone who’s been dicked around by unscrupulous landlords/agents within the boundaries of the law, I’d say that while it might be true that tenants can ALSO get away with an intolerable amount of shit, that doesn’t excuse the capacity for pure bullshit that landlords have.
wow you copped a lot of down votes, it might depend on the state but in vic i agree, i am both a landlord (with places in lower socio areas) and tenant so have experience on both sides.
I expected it.
Funny though how @tim said the same thing and got upvotes. Probably because he took the time to explain his position. I’m far too lazy to do anything like that, though.
As a former rental property owner, you’ve got no idea what you’re on about.
Renters have ALL the rights. My previous tenant didn’t renew his lease but didn’t move out for three weeks after his agreed date, all I could do was wait until he left to get my new tenants in.
So even though you keep every penny they paid you in rent and they get the ‘honour’ of occupying your surplus home – you still think they’re the ‘winners’ in the total equation? Sorry but that sounds like a rich-persons problem.
I am not having a go at you specifically – but if you own one house, rent another then you are faaaar better off than the ‘tenant’ – you are a LORD. if those 3 weeks screwed your finances then maybe you aren’t ready to be a Lord?
The sense of entitlement that LandLORDs seem to possess and shamelessly display is galling. LandLORDs get rich off the sweat of a person who is paying your surplus house off. I mean really you have a surplus house and bemoan a tenant having some ‘right’ that you don’t turf them on the street when they’ve failed to find a new accommodation in a frequently unrealistic time-frame.
Congratulations on having the most awesome first-world problem – surplus home you don’t actually need, unless ofcourse, you are using the rent to pay your personal home off in which case you really are a LORD.
Wow, so landLORDs are terrible people because they have done the hard work to be able to afford and own (possibly) more than one house which they then rent out so that people who cannot afford to buy their own place can live independently.
And shame on them for trying to protect their investment from shitty tenants, who can quite easily do incredible amounts of damage to that investment simply through not caring about the house because they don’t own it, and all they have to pay is not getting their bond back.
Sure some landlords can be terrible people, but being a landlord and working hard to be able to afford multiple properties doesn’t make you a terrible person. Perhaps the reason they are so shitty with tenants is because of the amount of times they have been burned renting out their houses before?
Hi even if the landlord has been burnt by previous tenants does not give them the right to treat the next tenants like crap.I personally don’t think all landlord are terrible people. if you treat your tenants with respect they will do the same
Personally I’m paying rent in one location while renting out the place I own… with the bank. So I’m a tenant as well as a landlord (although I leave dealing with tenants to the estate agents.)
Getting rich from owning property is overrated. Typically, weekly rent from a property is about one thousandth of the dollar value of the property. If you run the numbers, that’s an annual return from rent of about 5%. However, about a third of that goes in expenses of various sorts (strata title fees, rates, repairs) so effective return is about 3%. That’s almost certainly less than what you are paying in interest to finance it.
There’s depreciation and negative gearing to offset this, but when you eventually sell the place those numbers are used in calculating capital gains tax (at a 50% discount) so it’s not all roses.
However, property is and should be strictly a long term investment. The tenant is not there to pay for the property – they only pay half what the property costs you – but to offset costs. The risk is the tenant can screw up the property, which is why many landlords get very nervous about bad tenants. If the property does not increase much in value it’s all for naught.
(Picking a property that will gain in value over time is the important part, and the hardest.)
By my figuring if I had put aside the net loss I’ve made on property over the years into a bank account paying 0% interest I would be slightly better off (after selling my remaining properties and paying CGT) than I am now.
A lot of it’s luck in picking the right properties. Personally I’ve been very lucky with tenants, but less lucky in picking properties which increase significantly in value. I try to stay out of the tenants’ hair and deal with any maintenance issues quickly. But there are bad tenants out there as well as bad landords.
A) Not a rich person. Guilt-ridden trust fund baby.
B) Stop loading the term ‘lord’ with whatever you’re implying it with. There’s absolutely no power behind it.
C) You might not be having a go at me, but I’m certainly annoyed at you. Without knowing an ounce of how I came to own said ‘home’, you’ve assumed that I’m some kind of asshole home-owner who forced some bloke out of his home without thinking about his feelings. I offered to let him stay as long as he liked but he AGREED to a date and didn’t live up to his end of the agreement.
a) you own a home for yourself and a home someone else pays you to live in. you are rich.
b) if it didn’t have power you wouldn’t acknowledge it.
c) it’s not your ‘home’ it’s your tenants home – landLORD. The home you occupy is your home and you have no landLORD. I’ve assumed you’re a landLORD so this crazy rich persons idea that you own multiple homes but you rent 1 yet still call it your home is absurd.
I stick by my comments – you have the best first-world problem any rich person can have. congratulations on being offended by a statement of fact.
I’m not annoyed at you – just your efforts to downplay your social power and wealth. Keep going – you can own a third or forth ‘home’ if you like but other people will be paying it off for you, don’t kid yourself with this idea that your some magnanimous, generous poor guy handing cake to the poorer.
Pretty much the opposite really, the renter tends to have more rights than the landlord.
The only problem is trying to exercise those rights, (or doing the suggestion to making the place look like a pigsty) is its possible you could get flagged as a troublesome renter which makes it harder to get a new place.
They should have a troublesome landlord database and the links to view the info should be made available on sites like domain and realestate and provided by the agents at viewings so we know what we are getting ourselves into (i would give our previous landlords and agents a 2/10).
Presumably the OP has done the obvious thing and communicated with the Landlord to negotiate a “reasonable” number of viewings.. Perhaps even arranging a set day(s)/time(s) that are suitable.
If the landlord is unwilling to negotiate, then the other options could be further investigated, perhaps leaving a note on the fridge documenting the frequency of Inspections… a nice, subtle “message” to future tenants to steer clear of an unreasonable landlord.
When you inspect properties to buy/rent, do you go and read the notes the home owner/tenant has laying about?
Almost undoubtedly..
I wouldn’t go rifling through a filing cabinet, but I’d take a peek at bills on the fridge etc that were open to be seen.
Should have just done what we did when we moved out of our rental property…we’d basically already moved out by the time we gave them our notice. That way we didn’t need to deal with the viewings of prospective new tenants.
Is that really worth paying rent for something you’re not using though?
In our case yeah. It was an extra month of rent sure but it ensured that we were able to pack all of our stuff and move it all out, without needing to worry about inspections coming through.
Doesn’t that just mean you paid 4 weeks rent to not live there? Most people cannot afford to do that and that suits the landlord even more so.
If it requires multiple viewings then my question would be what is wrong with the property?
Are they asking for too much rent? Most good rentals in Sydney have one maybe two viewing before they are leased.
The rent is often advertised. Well priced places, get a lot of applications. I’ve known several people that have applied to rent homes. One applied for 6, put in their applications with proof of income, etc, had interviews at 5 of them, didn’t get any. One they were told the reason, and it was because 1 of them (they were a couple) was only employed as a contractor, not permanent. They got the 7th. If it’s a good price and house, there’ll be a lot of interest. Landlord can then choose who gets the place.
Not much you can do about this, Felt pretty hard done after I moved into a rental. exactly one month after I moved in they started showing people through the house. I tried to negotiate an early leave as this was quite annoying however the landlord would have none of that. SO i decided to play hard ball also. FIRSTLY you must have WRITTEN notice 24 hours this means registered post, a note or letter just dropped in by the agent is not acceptable. The agent tried to bring in new prospects one morning and I flat out said no I actually haven’t received written notice and refused them entry. Another time they goofed up on the letter and had the wrong date, so again I refused them entry. In short to the OP you can play hard ball. however there’s not much else you can do about it. renting is renting. You could I suppose just play really loud music and watch porn on your couch in your underwear whilst they try and bring people through. As by law they can’t ask you to leave. hope this helps
I did laugh.
Maybe have a few mates around to wear nose-plugs and eat mexican, then hotbox the place with some really noxious ‘natural gas’.
So you’ve told the owners you don’t want to renew the lease and are complaining now that they’re worried about their rental income and loan and are trying to get someone who DOES want to rent the place out. Sorry, but you need to look at it from their perspective and stop being selfish.
It’s the ‘continuous’ interruptions that are unreasonable. If they’re showing someone in every day or even every couple days, that’s very unreasonable, and ONLY looking at things from the owner’s perspective.
It is very common practice for prospective renters to only have one or two options in a week available to view a property, with multiple applicants viewing at the one time, booked well in advance – certainly more than the bare-minimum 24hrs required by law.
It’s pretty selfish and inconsiderate of the owner/agent to arrange a new inspection for every individual applicant.
Not to mention showing multiple people at once gives the prospective tenants the idea that it’s a hot property and they had better get their deposit down fast!
Downsides though:
(1) There are twice as many people to spot flaws.
(2) The agent has less opportunity to keep an eye on people who are, after all, wandering around somebody else’s house. Hope you didn’t need that iPad.
The real issue for most people I think is that they are often obligated to clean it to rent inspection levels and live that way for months.. The actual people coming through is less of an issue than the landlords associated requirements that come with that.
As far as I know though they are legally entitled to walk plenty of people through when for sale (written into most leases), they cannot legally breach your lease because of the state of the property at the time (I’ve heard of people getting “told off” for having washed dishes on the sink). I think they will frequently make it feel like they can do so, or will just do so at their next inspection regardless of the condition.. But realistically I think they just like to try and push their authority as far as they can – obviously they WANT the place to look like at an inspection.. that doesn’t mean they have the RIGHT to.
Absolutely agree.
The last place I rented, I’d given them I think about a months notice. They wanted an open house every Sat morning. Ok, that’s fine.
By the 2nd last week I was getting the “24hr notice to bring prospective tennants in” letter every second day.
My theory is that they were sending the letters out on the off chance they’d have someone go through, I don’t think they actually had that many people interested (at work during the week, so couldn’t tell). I was there for the open houses on Sats, and they didn’t have ONE person turn up in the entire month. The rent was way too high, and there were better places in the area for less money anyway.
The thing that got to me was, on a friday morning, about 9:30am, they called me at work, and said they had a couple interested and wanted to come through at 11am the same day, and they couldn’t come through any other time (not even the open house the next morning…). I said no, because I was in the middle of packing and had boxes and clothes everywhere, and even if I could’ve left work, I wouldn’t have been able to get back and pack everything away before they turned up.
I eventually gave in. I received a strongly worded email that afternoon saying I should ensure the house is “tidy” for bringing prospective tennants in. WTF. The house was clean, it was just stuff that was out of wardrobes/cupboards but not yet in boxes…. Really annoyed me that they had the hide to whinge when they didn’t even give me any notice.
So glad I bought and don’t have to deal with this again (at least not as a tennant). Drove past the house a few months later and there was a rusty car in the driveway, and the grass looked like it hadn’t been mowed since I did it. Kinda hope they were horrible tennants for the real estate (the owners of the property were fine, didn’t have a problem with them, just the real estate).
I don’t think Landlords should perform inspections while the property is occupied. Not only is it an inconvenience to the tenants as outlined above, but as a prospective tenant I feel uncomfortable entering the personal space for strangers to sum it over for me to replace them. Since all their stuff is already there I don’t get to properly see the state of the house as it would be when I move in, including flaws/damage and differences in cleaning and lighting.
When the tenants are there everyone walks around quietly and awkwardly, some rooms may not be seen because they are currently in use, the inspection takes less time and is usually less thorough. Also I’ve been to inspections where the tenants are not home at the time, and still the landlord/agent unlocks the door and enters. I have no idea in these cases if they have permission or given notice that this will occur, yet still they let in strangers into people’s private spaces.
As a renter who has been screwed by landlords/real estate agents twice, it is completely untrue that the tenancy laws are weighted in favour of renters.
Let me give you an example.
The first time i rented, the landlord was very accomodating during the inspection. The room was advertised as “all bills included”. We were to share things like the bathroom, kitchen, etc.
After i moved in, everything went to hell. The landlord waited till i showed up with my luggage to give me a contract worded differently to what we discussed….in particular the fact that the bills would not include use of a heater. We eventually agreed that i would pay a reasonable amount after the next electricity bill came in.
A week after i moved in, the landlord suddenly announced that i was no longer allowed access to the fridge. That would mean i was not able to cook. His claim? They had no space in the fridge. There were literally three dozen condiment bottles in the fridge, and they refused to make any space for me.
Any attempt at discussion simply resulted in the landlord blowing me off. I sought legal advice, and was told that there was technically nothing wrong with refusing me access to the fridge, as long as it was not explictly mentioned in the contract. No landlord would put that in the contract obviously.
While i was wondering what to do, the landlord decided to step things up a notch. Not only did he demand my bond in cash, he refused to deposit it with fair trading, something that my lawyer had told me was very illegal. I advised him of this, but the landlord decided he would just evict me with 3 days notice. At the same time, he turned off the router every time he left the house, preventing me from using the internet to search for accomodation. The router was locked in his room and was inaccessible to me. He also demanded $10/day for use of the heater (or something similar), an outrageous amount. Some really childish things started happening at this point…for example he splashed water on my toilet paper in the bathroom, preventing me from using it.
I panicked. How was i going to find somewhere to stay in three days? I quickly arranged an emergency meeting with my lawyer, was directed to the tenancy advocacy service, whom advised me to file an urgent application with the tribunal to prevent my landlord from evicting me, and said not to worry because what the landlord was doing was VERY illegal.
I paid the fee, waited for the hearing date, and went. I had been advised by the lawyer at the advocacy service that the judge would hear both sides of the story and make a decision. I was confident that upon hearing the facts, the judge would come down hard on my landlord.
My landlord showed up with a friend, who kept whispering into his ear, presumably to give him advice. My landlord’s strategy was simple : insist that he had done no wrong, that he had no idea why he was there and claimed that i was illegally witholding the bond from him.
The judge turned to me and i got ready to tell him my side of the story, which would surely sound more plausible than “i did nuffin your honour!”. The judge instead demanded to know why i was breaking the law. He refused to listen to anything i had to say and accused me of being a criminal straight away. I had no idea how to respond. He yelled at me for a few seconds, then demanded to know what i wanted. I attempted to tell my side of the story, but he rudely cut me off and again demanded to know what i wanted.
Very confused at this point, i said that i wanted more time to find another place to stay, that the landlord stop interfering with the internet and that my bond be lodged with fair trading instead of being kept by the landlord in cash. My landlord was smiling widely at this point because he didn’t have to put any effort into defending himself, the judge was skipping the entire process for him.
The judge hastily scribbled something on a piece of paper, handed it to me, and insisted i sign it. I started reading it, but he refused to give me time to read it and demanded that i sign it immediately. I couldn’t believe a judge was insisting i sign a contract without reading it! I attempted to ask him what was on the paper, but his only response was to yell at me again to sign it. When i refused to, he tried to assign another hearing date, when i objected, he shouted at me to sit down and he would deal with my case later.
Two ladies then came in, one from a real estate agency, the judge heard BOTH of their stories and very politely agreed to another hearing date where more evidence would be presented. Then it was back to yelling at me to sign the paper. He finally rolled his eyes and told me that on the paper were the conditions i had mentioned and signing it would mean that i had agreed to them.
With no other choice available, and since the tribunal was clearly not going to help, i signed it and walked away. My landlord started laughing after he left the room.
So in summary, my landlord got away with breaking the law and the tribunal didn’t care at all, they just accepted his story at face value. That he had done nothing wrong.
I do not see how the tenancy laws can be weighted in favour of the renters when a landlord can deny access to the fridge and other parts of the apartment, and have it all remain perfectly legal. And simply claim he had done nothing wrong whatsoever, and not have a judge question his version of events.
Sounds like the judge screwed you over, not the landlord. Share housing is always a gamble, and I have never seen it work well outside of a relationship.
it sounds like you had a horrible experience however a few things to note.
Share houses and inclusions are very different to what most people class as ‘rental’. The law however is still very stacked in your favour i am not sure what the judge was on about but from your version of the events the outcome should have been dramatically different.
In future a few things to note,
* get things in writing, you don’t need to say fridge specifically but if the contract had said access to the house main living, cooking and bathroom areas, including use of appliances, etc.. and exclusive use of xyz bedroom then you would have been better placed. Services including interenet, etc…
* get the contract before you move in, you lost your ‘leverage’ for negotiation and it sounds like you were taken advantage of.
* dont give over cash with out a receipt, if you had a receipt for the bond and he didn’t have lodgement details it would have been open/shut against him.
I am not a lawyer but i take steps to cover myself.
Kind of late, but none of that actually works.
In my case, the judge refused to hear my story so i could not mention anything about the fridge or anything else at all. At that point, whether or not you have a contract mentioning the fridge is irrelevant.
The landlord’s plan was also to lie and pretend he wasn’t restricting access to the fridge or anything else at all. My word vs his.
I had receipts for the bank transfers, but the judge refused to hear my story so i couldnt even mention that he was illegally keeping the bond.
The other story i have involves a real estate agency.
The real estate agency rented this apartment to some guy who was renting for the first time. The real estate agent had proceeded to hoodwink him with the paperwork. The paperwork was incomplete and missing the agent and renter’s signatures on most of the pages. The agent either did not bother to explain to the guy how the paperwork was done or deliberately refrained from explaining to him. The guy then subletted to me.
The problem started shortly after i moved in. The internet (ADSL 2+) would repeatedly disconnect every hour or so. After discussion with TPG and Telstra in regards to the internet and phone line respectively, a TPG tech was sent to check things out. He fiddled with the MDF and phone socket for a while, concluded that the wiring in the building was at fault, and that we should contact the real estate agency to get an electrician to look at the wiring for the phone socket and possibly the rest of the building.
The agent, upon hearing the problem, got extremly pissed off. He told me that he had known of this problem for many years, and everyone renting before us had told him of this problem. He accused TPG of blaming the building wiring in order to charge a call out fee (we were not charged one). He refused to get an electrician to check out the wiring for the building or socket, and told us that anything to do with the internet was our problem, because the internet was not mentioned on the inspection checklist. The checklist was pretty much bare bones and missing almost everything in the apartment other than the permanent fixtures (gee i wonder why?). It was also not signed by both the renter and agent on all pages.
The renter was completely clueless on what to do and asked me for help. I called fair trading, who advised me that as long as the internet (or phone socket, i can’t remember the exact terms used) was there when we moved in, it is part of the apartment and the real estate agency’s responsibility. Checking the exact laws involved confirmed this. The law was on our side, but what could we do? From past experiences, i knew what would happen if we applied to the tribunal. The agent would simply deny everything, stall and the incomplete paperwork would be his smoking gun….the renter hadn’t disputed the lack of internet on the check list (he had no idea he was supposed to).
Discussions with several real estate agents on internet forums revealed tons of loopholes that were often used by agents to escape responsibility. One favourite one for example, was to refuse to acknowledge the existence of most items in the house in the inspection checklist. The prospective renter could dispute of course, but the agent was under no obligation to address the dispute. He could simply tell the renter to go away, refuse to respond, pretend he was never contacted about the dispute, all sorts of things. The prospective renter would have to pay the application fee, for an apartment he hadn’t even rented yet, and the agent would simply deny all wrong doing and assure the judge that of course, he was a professional agent, he knew the laws and followed them to the letter.
Even if the judge were to rule against the agent, as the agent in charge of a property, there were an infinite number of ways to get back at the renter for revenge.
Another one was refusing to fix problems in the apartment. Let’s say a door had fallen off the hinges. Renter calls agent, agent refuses to fix it because he already has his commission. Renter applies to tribunal. Agent swears up and down that he was NEVER contacted about it, the phone call never happened, the call was about something completely unrelated, he never received the email, the letter sent via post never arrived….
It was ambigious whether it was the agent’s responsibility to ensure the paperwork was done correctly, as it was too easy to push the blame to the renter. And even if the paperwork was done correctly and handed to the agent, the agent could always make sure it went missing and claim the renter had never given it to him in the first place…
In the end, i was able to bypass the agent and talk to the building manager, who was not from the real estate company. He was very nice and agreed to have a telstra tech inspect the phone lines. The tech came, did something and it was fixed within a week.
But god knows what i could have done if i had to go through the agent for it.
One suggestion is that you force the agent to contact you by mail to organise viewings (screen calls, out of office auto reply emails). That adds essentially a 2-3 day delay to any request, which effectively limits the frequency to once per week and forces them to be organised.
Another suggestion is to negitiate for an inspection every 2 weeks, and to prepare for that inspection (prepare the place nicely). The alternative being more regular inspections when the place isn’t tidy / presented well. Their choice.
And if you’re don’t feel like being nice, submit a maintenance request for something minor but the responsibility of the landlord after each visit. They’ll get the pattern eventually!
Oh man don’t even get me started on real estate agents. They are THE WORST. And I do think that the laws don’t help landlords with bad tenants either, but it just goes to show that the whole system is messed up and the weakest link in the chain is real estate companies.
I was renting a place and they were trying to sell it, so of course, inspections every other day. They did the correct notice etc. but at the time I was unemployed and quite depressed so I was home a lot. One time I was having a really really bad day and had been crying and a complete mess and rang them up and said, look, I’m really sick, please reschedule, I’m at home and I really can’t deal with people coming over, they said, oh well, can we still come? we won’t go in to your bedroom. WTF!? I said no, I’ve been vomiting all day, you cannot come in to the house, reschedule and they finally left me alone, but legally you have no rights to prevent them from coming in. AT ALL. I should have lied and said I had some horrid contagious disease but that’s ridiculous. A person should be able to enjoy the privacy of their own home. ESPECIALLY on saturday mornings and they should have to reschedule if you request it. Obviously not indefinitely, but seriously… And why would it be so hard to set limits to 2 inspections a week? Or take a damn video or something!
Also if you break your lease in QLD, you are opening yourself to be absolutely screwed. The agents have no obligations whatsoever other than to advertise the property and show it once a week or so. Ours told us that they’d found a tenant, returned the bond to one of the housemates, we finalised rent and paid up until the date, 17 DAYS LATER, they come back and say oh guess what, the original tenant fell through, but we found someone else so just pay us for the extra 17 days of rent. Ended up at tribunal where I argued that they failed to mitigate loss by not informing me for SEVENTEEN days of the change of circumstances but because they did the absolute bare minimum under the stupid law, I had to pay. So it didn’t matter that I tried to contact the morons (several times through email, phone calls and in person visits) to see why my bond hadn’t been returned, or that they returned one other person’s bond or that we had agreed that the lease was terminated. None of that mattered a single bit because the law is vague and because you’re a horrible lease breaking crackhead you have no rights.
On top of that, the only reason we broke our lease was because they didn’t allow me to move out and get a new tenant in. Which is against the law (we later found out).
I can’t believe the responses from some of you. Landlords aren’t evil. For some reason you think that the landlords “OWE” you something??? And one of you even said that inspections shouldn’t be allowed whilst the tenant occupies the property?
How do you think landlords can afford to keep their property? They’re not all rich. For some of us, it’s our nest egg so we aren’t dependent upon the Government for our retirement!!! So a vacant property costs a LOT of money.
The laws are heavily skewed in favour of the tenants already. Don’t try and argue that one, because I’ve been to the tribunal 3 times when trying to get my house (that I now live in) back from tenants who decided not to pay rent for almost 5 months. And there was not a single thing I could do about it.
Get your heads out of your backsides. There’s good and bad on both sides but why shouldn’t a landlord be able to show their property to potential tenants? Their ability to keep the property is directly related to their ability to get a tenant in as soon as the previous one moves out. A property without a tenant is a mortgage that has to be paid from somewhere… Some landlords are wealthy, sure. But most aren’t!!!
PS I no longer have my rental apartment as it was too expensive – despite it being new, having tenants in there was too costly. You might think “Too bad, that’s your problem”. Sure, it is. But it means that the next buyer has to charge more rent, in order to cover the extra cost of the unit as it now needs a refresh. Some of you forget that if the landlord gets shafted, so does the tenant. This “Tenant vs landlord” crap that some of you spout will hurt both parties, and this will drive up rents even further.
the landlord owes what you pay for ,a home to live in as you see fit ,not as they see fit .landlords are allowed to bill you for damage not for the lifestyle you lead .you are not required to keep your home perfect because you are not paying to caretake someone elses property or they would be paying you .landlords like to act like your their employee ,and thats just not cool.your paying for a place to live ,any damages you can expect to pay for ,but in the mean time you actually get to live there as if it were your home because that is what you are paying for.if you as a landlord dont like it ,get a real job and stop making profit off the backs of people who are increasing your economic status because they havent been able to exploit enough to “earn” their own home .renters end up paying for 5 homes in their lifetime but due to the spoiled being allowed to profit from their existence they end up paying to care take someone elses property while the “land lord” holds on to the ever increasing equity to benefit themselves .and yeah ,the “law” protects the one with the most money ,never more so than now.the rich ,who of course dont consider themselves rich and never will because 2 homes and consistent income from the backs of the poor they exploit for profit is never enough .people are paying you for a home to live in not a contract for you to tell them how they will live ,who will spend the night and how often ,how pretty the car is you park in the driveway ,or how often you do your dishes.if they destroy something they have to pay for it on move out ,nothing more .
Don’t forget that there are extremely good tenants out there that get screwed over by past history of bad tenants. My current rental was trashed by previous tenants, landlord spent money to fix a few things and whenever i have a maintenance request i get told landlord is not prepared to spend any more money on the property. I keep the place very clean and tidy, if i left the property in the same way i found it i would never get my bond back. All of the issues that were bad and needed repairing and werent fixed at the time prior to me moving in were written on the entry condition report. None of those have been rectified yet and my lease is now coming to en end, i chose not to renew mainly because repairs weren’t being done.