Is your tenant living in squalor? This video is hard to watch

Is your tenant living in squalor? This video is hard to watch
Jennifer DukeDecember 7, 2020

Watch the video below, and tell us: could you have lived in this?

According to Just Think Real Estate’s Edwin Almeida, who told us that on his inspection of the property he couldn’t be in there for more than six minutes, the tenants did so – for two years! They even paid $410 per week for the pleasure. The rental is in Sydney's Homebush area.

What you see on the ceiling there, is copious amounts of mould. Around the fuse box? Asbestos. Also note that there is no smoke detector.

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The tenants were asthmatic and their fuses kept blowing out.

The investor had been self-managing and had allowed the property to get into this state, later asking a property manager to take over when he found himself dealing with tenants in arrears and some property damage.

Luckily, the landlord has now renovated, spending up to $15,000, and bringing the rent up to $480 per week. The renovation included fixing the broken fence, fixing the mould and electrical problems, fixing the concrete balcony, a kitchen upgrade and other more cosmetic fixes. The property could now achieve somewhere around $750,000 if it was put on the market, says Almeida, compared to around $600,000 beforehand.

See the gallery below for the fixed up property. These photos were provided as part of the most recent routine inspection report.

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However, it could have created far more problems; including possible liability for the landlord should a tenant have gotten sick. Unfortunately, not all stories are happy stories.

With Property Observer reporting about a landlord being sued $300,000 for a balcony collapse due to poor maintenance in a Melbourne rental, it’s now more critical than ever that investors, particularly self-managing ones, and property managers are aware of what is required from them.

Almeida has been providing Property Observer information for the ‘Is your tenant living in squalor?’ series. He says the property above is not the worst he has seen, and that these problems are rife across Sydney.

He details the following:

The misnomer when we discuss the topic of “tenants and landlords” in relation to self-managed properties, that the landlord is somehow exempt from legislative obligations around duty of care, is far from the truth. This is not the case, and burying your head in the sand and thinking you have some sort of exception will only create more issues.

Some, no doubt, have come face to face with the “tenants from hell” as noted in this article but is it always the tenants that are at fault? This is a question that has to be asked and dealt with on a case by case basis.

What of the landlord’s responsibilities in relation to providing a safe living environment under the residential tenancies Act 2010? Regardless of whether the property is self-managed or managed by an agent, there is an obligation. We can blame the tenants all we like, and even jump up and down as much as we want, but the question remains: Why are the issues allowed to become so big in the first place? The law works both ways, it doesn’t just protect tenants as many would like you to believe.

Now back to the issue of safe living standards. Outside of damage caused by tenants, there is a clear obligation for the landlord to provide a safe living environment. Don’t be fooled in thinking that not many cases are recorded or heard around landlords being sued for damages in the area of health. Most of the cases around this are settled outside of the courts before they become too costly. These are costs that overshadow arrears and any other form of malicious damage done to property by the tenant.

The video attached to this article is a short glimpse of a self-managed property. Yes, there was an arrears, some damage to some of the rooms. But frankly, these problems are overshadowed by the fact that the property was riddled with hazards that may cost the landlord tens of thousands of dollars due to possible health and safety issues, if they are sued. Some of these issues included mould, being the most obvious, as well as electrical hazards, sharp objects and falling fences.

Again this is a third call for the governing bodies to be more proactive when it comes to dealing with living standards. We are not living in a third world country and surely we have more than a legislative obligation to providing a safe living environment. We have a strong moral obligation just the same if not more prudent.

I note the financial temperature of the property market is 'hot' and equity levels of properties are increasing on an almost daily basis. So why not put back and re-invest into these properties? Look at the upside: higher rental returns, greater values in terms of equity, and the obvious one: you won’t get sued!

If you don’t want to lose it all because you didn’t fix the issue early enough before someone was injured or suffered a health loss, then ask yourself the question one more time: Is your tenant living in squalor?

 

jduke@propertyobserver.com.au

 

 

 

managing partner and licensee-in-charge of Just Think Real Estate

Jennifer Duke

Jennifer Duke was a property writer at Property Observer

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