Are Canberra tenants selfish?

Reminds me of these…

http://www.27bslash6.com/strata.html

http://www.27bslash6.com/grubby.html

devils_advocate said :

Mysteryman said :

Thank you for your well thought out response. I’m suggesting that a single anecdotal instance of something does not indicate a trend.

NO problem at all. The OP offered a single anecdote, the rest are contained in the comments. Also, note the OP said “are canberra tenants selfish” (i.e. a question) as opposed to the statement “canberra tenants are selfish”. It’s intended to invite discussion, not present an empirical conclusion.

Not quite.

a growing number of Canberra tenants seem to think that paying rent entitles them to a five star, 24 hour concierge service. This isn’t a reflection of a tenants’ improved understanding of their rights, it shows an unreasonable expectation that the world owes them something.

And only a single anecdote to back it up.

The BIG issue is that there is no transparency or accountability between the Agent, Tenant and Owner. Where’s the instruction manual on how to be a good tenant, or how to be a good owner – common sense does not apply, have you read how complicated the Tenancy Act is? Real Estate Agents don’t offer the information or services that they should for what they are getting paid. How about an online Real Estate system where all of the Tenant, Owner and Agents information is available online 24×7 – where Owners can see all communication between Tenants and Agents (keeping the Agents accountable) – 10% management fee on $500 a week rent is $2,600 a year plus letting and advertising fees…..what does this buy the owner? One inspection a year and collection of rent???…What do the Tenants get for the rent they pay (which covers the Agents fees). Coming soon is a new type of Real Estate Agency that answers all these questions and will provide ultimate transparency and accountability for Owners and Tenants….watch this space…..

I had one landlord that used to do the repairs himself. Always poorly. What really annoyed me is that he’d turn up unannounced to do the repairs and usually bring his three young children with him. I remember one time I snapped and yelled at one of his kids for waking my sleeping baby. Needless to say we got the boot shortly after that incident.

HenryBG said :

What’s the worst a landlord can do to a tenant?

Steal their bond by inventing excuses to keep it? How much is that going to cost?

Compare that with the nightmare of having a tenant who trashes your house and then refuses to pay rent. As a landlord you can up for thousands in repairs PLUS months of no rental income into the bargain.

I’ve had the annoyance of having to write off part of my bond more than once. But I’ve been properly shafted by a selfish, lazy, dishonest tenant once, too. There is no comparison.

Plenty of things landlords can do to make a tenant’s life hell. Default on the mortgage and have the bank enter into possession without any notice to the tenant. Sell the property during the period of the tenancy and then exercise their right to have people traipsing through the house on a saturday morning (this in particular would be a special kind of hell for me, can you imagine having to organise your hangovers around an inspection schedule?), or exercising their right to take possession for relative’s requirements. Ratcheting up the rent unreasonably based not on the market price but on the premium that any sensible person would pay to avoid having to move. Hiring stupid property managers that somehow forget the filthy condition in which the lease commenced but expect you to have the property pristine at each 6 month interval. And that’s just the stuff that is within the law. Some landlords don’t even have a basic recognition of the right to quiet enjoyment.

I could go on but it’s bringing back too many memories. However, there is a reason why people pay a premium to own rather than rent.

We’ve rented a number of places both in Canberra and overseas. Mostly through agents, but also a couple of private ones. We’ve noticed a huge difference between renting in France, where the law is firmly geared towards protecting the rights of tenants, and renting here, where it seems to be more focused on the landlords. (For example, in France, there’s a thing called the “winter truce” – basically it’s illegal to evict a tenant between November and March, even is they’ve completely stopped paying rent.)

The biggest difference has got to be the property managers. Our last rental was for about 3 years – in that time we went through about 6 property managers. (Basically each inspection was with a different PM). The first property manager didn’t provide us with an inspection report, despite my asking on average twice a week, in writing, for the first 4 weeks. She also told us we could “throw out the junk that was under the house”. Turned out that under the house was meant to be locked, and that the junk belonged to the landlord!

Subsequent property managers were all very nice, young ladies, just out of school/tafe, but completely unresponsive. Half-collapsed carport threatening to damage fence and shed? No sweat, we’ll get someone out to look at it – after five weeks of phone calls and emails. The best (worst?) was when the central heating fried itself. It took them two weeks to organise a technician, then I had to take a day off work because they couldn’t let me know exactly when the techo would be there (“between 9am and 3pm”). Fair enough, I said, and waited around all day. Techo didn’t show – it turns out they’d given him the wrong address.

When we left the property I asked – again – for a copy of the initial inspection report. Surprise surprise, there wasn’t one. No record whatsoever. Still, we tidied and cleaned up and made sure everything was in good nick.

Icing on the cake: about three months after we moved out (and new tenants moved in), we got some redirected mail from the (new) property manager advising us of our upcoming inspection! I should add that this is a (supposedly) reputable outfit with offices all over Canberra.

Attention all crappy landlords: To minimise potential selfish behaviour by tenants, provide them with a decent property that works AS ADVERTISED. It’s the law.

If you hold an open inspection and your property comes with what the tenants see as a doorbell, garage with lock and phone line, it is quite reasonable for said tenants to expect the doorbell, garage lock and phone line to WORK. Potential tenants don’t normally come to inspections with a Telstra technician or a locksmith. If you already KNEW the said items do not work, why weren’t they included in the condition report!

What’s the worst a landlord can do to a tenant?

Steal their bond by inventing excuses to keep it? How much is that going to cost?

Compare that with the nightmare of having a tenant who trashes your house and then refuses to pay rent. As a landlord you can up for thousands in repairs PLUS months of no rental income into the bargain.

I’ve had the annoyance of having to write off part of my bond more than once. But I’ve been properly shafted by a selfish, lazy, dishonest tenant once, too. There is no comparison.

harvyk1 said :

As a side note, about 8 years ago I moved into a place where after a couple of weeks the garage door remote stopped working, the problem was not the batteries, so was I being unreasonable asking for the LL to repair the issue, should I have been charged $1000/wk because I asked the LL to make sure something supplied with the property was actually working?

No, this is a different situation to what is being cited by the OP. The OP is talking about dead batteries, not other causes for garage remote malfunction. The OP’s case requires common sense by the tenant, your example is different because it’s an actual maintenance problem that requires action by the landlord/rea. Don’t try to obfuscate the argument by introducing a different fact situation to try and make the conclusion look unreasonable.

Mysteryman said :

Thank you for your well thought out response. I’m suggesting that a single anecdotal instance of something does not indicate a trend.

NO problem at all. The OP offered a single anecdote, the rest are contained in the comments. Also, note the OP said “are canberra tenants selfish” (i.e. a question) as opposed to the statement “canberra tenants are selfish”. It’s intended to invite discussion, not present an empirical conclusion.

Property Manager

Copies of the notes made during each inspection should be provided to tenants as a matter of course.

When a remote stops working, my first reaction is to check the batteries, not ring someone for help. I wonder what these sort of people do when their TV remote stops working?

Yep , while these property managers may like to get around calling themselves professionals ( they seem to see themselves in the league as lawyers and doctors lol ) , the reality is you’re mostly dealing with some school dropout in her early 20s.

They are quick to throw around breach notices and eviction demands , often due to problems created by their own laziness and stupidity , leaving the tenant chasing them about trying to sort out the issue as though it’s their own fault!

Luckily I’m no longer a tenant but I have been one. While not a model tenant, I’ve always netted to zero by the end of the lease. However, the best property manager story was getting home one day after an unattended rental inspection to find an eviction notice on my (well I guess it’s not “my”) floor.

Apparently I’d done significant damage to the kitchen wall, not only was I essentially evicted I was expected to pay for it. The kitchen wall was indeed significantly damaged – someone had spent two days systematically destroying it I guess.

Why were they destroying it? The OTHER property manager at the same real estate agency whom I’d reported the leaking shower had organised the wall and shower cavity to be stripped and resealed.

harvyk1 said :

As an example, I recently had a tenant request a replacement for a failing garage door remote, but when I asked her to at least see if replacing the battery would help she found that there was no fault. She would happily have cost the owner $150+ for the cost of a new programmed remote when all that was needed was to replace a $5 battery.

Quite frankly it’s none of her business if her reasonable request costs the owner $5 or $150, it’s up to the property manager \ owner to fix any problems regardless.

There are problems such as a faulty remote that the owner should fix, however things like batteries and light globes are consumable items which unless I am mistaken are very much the responsibility of the tenant. It becomes a bit rough when the tenant claims something is faulty to get out of paying $5 and it ends up costing the owner a fair bit more.

Had the exact same issue in my place when I lived O/S and it was rented out by 3 tennants over a 5 year period

Tenants 1 were not what I would call model tenants, often late in payments, did some damage to the house, BUT in their defence when they left all damage was fixed and the rent was up to date so cannot complain too much.

Tenant two was a middle aged single lady who asked for nothing, paid her rent and looked after the place. The only reason she moved on was because she wanted to buy a house, and actually was a tad disappointed when she asked to buy mine and I refused.

Tenant 3 however were right royal pains in the arse. I reckon at least once a month there was an issue, had the “faulty” garage remote that was really a flat battery, twice (but was picked up by the agent, about the best thing they did for me). Had two faulty lights, read blown light globes. They couldn’t water the garden as the dripper system was faulty, later found out that the fault was as a result of a cut pipe, good one. They expected me to pay for a gardener once a month, hey guys you rent a place with a garden you are meant to maintain it, though yes I did get a gardener twice a year to do things like cut the hedge that required special tools etc.

A faulty evap air con that turned out to be lack of water due to the tap not being on ended costing me $150 despite advising the agent and the tenant to check that the tap was on.

When the time came for me to come back I found that there first 12 months would expire about 5 months before I returned. As an incentive to keep them as long as possible I offered them rent at half price on a month by month basis, only to find after 4 months they found another place, fair enough however what wasn’t fair was when they asked for a refund of 3 weeks rent they had paid and then got shitty when I said no. Hello I offered half price rent as an incentive…

Came back to find damage to the house that was not picked up by the agent, including broken shelf clearly used as a step, blinds that the agent made them clean as they were dirty but they seemed to damage when cleaning. Thanks Mr Hooker or should I say Mr Horne or who ever you are, would have preferred dirty blinds to damaged blinds, or maybe for you to hold the tenant responsible for the damage. And good old white out over the grout in the shower as the tenant couldn’t have been bothered to clean in the 16 months they were there. That one cost me about $500 to have the old grout removed and replaced.

I also found water damage to the ceiling in a 3 places that was not the tenants fault but clearly they should have seen it and reported it so I could get it fixed. As it turned out cost me $500 to repair, but as it was done after the house stopped being a rental I couldn’t claim it. Grrr.

So yeah not all rosy and depends upon who your tenants are.

Shanski_0 said :

Our rent has not risen in 5 years

Sweet cheeses, that’s one nice land lord. Inflation alone over that period is something like 15+ percent.

Reminds me of the time the house alarm just kept arming itself and going off, while not letting us disarm it again. The realestate agent told me I needed to change the battery in the control panel and that would fix everything. Except there was no battery in the control panel. Ended up needing a new backup battery because the owner hadn’t bothered servicing the system in over 10 years and it had fried itself.

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

Maybe we need a ratings system…?

What, of Property Managers, from merely fussy to OCD?

devils_advocate said :

Mysteryman said :

So you have one example of a tenant asking you for something that was easily fixed when you made a suggestion (perhaps they just weren’t thinking when they made the , and that is supposed to indicate a “growing culture of helplessness and unreasonable expectancy that the property owner will foot the bill for everything without any requirement of common sense of minor effort from the tenant”? Doubtful.

That’s what an example is – it’s one instance that is illustrative of a given issue. As opposed to a comprehensive listing.

Thank you for your well thought out response. I’m suggesting that a single anecdotal instance of something does not indicate a trend.

Grail said :

It’s up to the property manager and owner to maintain the property in a habitable state. It’s usually the responsibility of the tenant to change light bulbs, replace smoke alarm batteries yearly, oil hinges, mop floors, wash windows, remove cobwebs, etc.

If you think otherwise, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. I’ll warn you in advance that I currently rent this apartment out for $380/wk, but for the service you are asking, I’ll be charging $1000/wk, and you’ll be signing a clause that gives me access to the property 24/7. You’ll get the service, don’t worry about that. The things I will do for money are only limited by decency and legality.

I see you completely missed my point, the keyword was “reasonable request”. Obviously keeping the property in a good condition, and replacing consumables (such as light bulbs) is the responsibility of the tenant.

However I personally think a garage door remote not working it is not unreasonable for the tenant to ask the LL about it. As a side note, about 8 years ago I moved into a place where after a couple of weeks the garage door remote stopped working, the problem was not the batteries, so was I being unreasonable asking for the LL to repair the issue, should I have been charged $1000/wk because I asked the LL to make sure something supplied with the property was actually working?

Maybe we need a ratings system…?

It’s a bit like job brokerage. You get amazing employers who get screwed, and great jobseekers, who get screwed. It was always nice to be able to connect the good with the good but wasn’t always easy.
It’s a shame that the good landlords can’t connect with the good tenants.

I’ve had private rental I love that I can call our LL for a chat, I’m glad we have a close relationship, it makes us feel more comfortable about telling her when things go wrong… We only ever alert her when something big happens, like the hot water system goes out, or our carport falls down.. Our rent has not risen in 5 years, our LL is flexible with the rent if we need it, e.g – My partner lost his job, and my pay was messed up, our LL was very cool with this….

We do our best to try and not stress our land lord.. we fix leaky taps and whatever else we can do ourselves… We have permission to make changes to the house as long as we doesn’t damage… We are a little too scared to change anything though! the only thing we pay for, or will be paying for, is a gardener…

I’ve had real estate rentals as well, And I didn’t like them, May have been the company i was going through, but I just found having the property manager was less personal,. far stricter and just very sterile to deal with… (no offence to any PM’s… It’s just the company, and the woman I dealt with)

I think part of it is the fact that property managers (or landlords) are so strict about you keeping the property in ex-act-ly the same state as you got it. This may seem an over the top statement if you have not lived in a country where it is custom to pain the interior of a rental when you move in, can bang hooks in walls as much as you like and where they never do inspections nor ask you if you have pets when you apply.

The other reason is the high rents. People are used to “you get what you pay for” and for $500 a week, you do expect to get a lot.

Cry me a river

Holden: Indeed there are dickheads everywhere, it’s one of the great wonders of modern society.
Me No Fry: I couldn’t agree more.
Harveyk1: Thank you for illustrating my point.

Wow, one anecdotal example to back up an entire argument. When did RiotACT become talkback radio?? I’m a tenant but can see both sides for what they are – reflections of a normal society. For every asshole landlord in Canberra, there is an equally asshole tenant. You can only hope that the universe brings them together and leaves the good landlords and tenants to get on with their lives.

An interesting OP. As with anything involving the human race there will be a varietyof tenants as there is with landlords.We recently evicted a tenant from a family members property that was your classic never pay the rent, punch holes in the wall kind of guy. The charming mess he left behind was almost a cliche.

On the other hand I have a tenant that has been perfect, pays on time keeps the property clean etc. We recently agreed to rener their lease with no incraese in rent as an acknowledgement of this.

Funny you mention the lightbulb, we actually had that once. Wanted an electrician to come out and change it. Also wanted a locksmith to come out and explain how deadbolts work.

If you want to be the type of tenant who demands every inch of his rights then expect a landlord who does the same.

Mysteryman said :

So you have one example of a tenant asking you for something that was easily fixed when you made a suggestion (perhaps they just weren’t thinking when they made the , and that is supposed to indicate a “growing culture of helplessness and unreasonable expectancy that the property owner will foot the bill for everything without any requirement of common sense of minor effort from the tenant”? Doubtful.

That’s what an example is – it’s one instance that is illustrative of a given issue. As opposed to a comprehensive listing.

Tetranitrate said :

“As an example, I recently had a tenant request a replacement for a failing garage door remote, but when I asked her to at least see if replacing the battery would help she found that there was no fault. She would happily have cost the owner $150+ for the cost of a new programmed remote when all that was needed was to replace a $5 battery. “

This is not evidence of selfishness as you’re trying to twist it toward being, it’s evidence of stupidity.

My thoughts exactly. Some people just lack the ability to troubleshoot problems like that. If she had refused to try changing the battery or demanded that someone else fix it, then you could probably chalk it up as unreasonable expectations.

harvyk1 said :

Quite frankly it’s none of her business if her reasonable request costs the owner $5 or $150, it’s up to the property manager \ owner to fix any problems regardless.

It’s up to the property manager and owner to maintain the property in a habitable state. It’s usually the responsibility of the tenant to change light bulbs, replace smoke alarm batteries yearly, oil hinges, mop floors, wash windows, remove cobwebs, etc.

If you think otherwise, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. I’ll warn you in advance that I currently rent this apartment out for $380/wk, but for the service you are asking, I’ll be charging $1000/wk, and you’ll be signing a clause that gives me access to the property 24/7. You’ll get the service, don’t worry about that. The things I will do for money are only limited by decency and legality.

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

I’m a landlord several times over, and I’ve found that it’s well worth going to the effort of finding a decent property manager. It’s also well worth going to the effort of finding and retaining good tenants.

I have a policy of treating tenants like clients, and making sure they have everything they need, and that any issues are fixed immediately. I also have a policy of removing dickhead tenants (which I have found happens only very rarely, mainly because I filter them out when they apply).

I’ve rented a number of properties over the years, and I have found, in my experience, there are many landlords like you, where if you are happy to be a good tenant, there equally happy to be good landlords.

My biggest rule these days, is to avoid situations where the landlords seem too close, my first rental had the landlord living in a house in the backyard, and he had a tendency to enter the house while we were out, and my last one was a property where the landlords lived over a hill out back, and owned all the surrounding land, in there case they wanted too much controll over the house (to the extent of asking we put pot plants on the veranda to make it look nicer) and therfore took the liberty of trying to design our life to suit thier wishes for the property.

Apart from that it’s been quite pleasant, one guy was a little to DIY, so repairs were always done by him, even where they exceeded his expertese (but hey, he was a nice guy, and it was $150 a week for a 2 bedroom place, you got used to the odd leaky wall) and one was very disinterested in the house, so repairs took a while, but the house was good, and he was very professional.

From my observations, and experiences it’s really about the people, and personally I could not say that there are more bad tennant than landlords, or vice versa, just good and bad people on each side.

Property managers tend to be the same, i have had some that went to amazing lenghts to be as helpfull as possible (the last house had one of the best, she put more effort in than i could have asked to try and get our landlords to back off) and others have been harder to deal with (one lady was nice enough, but the ageny itself insisted on some very excessive inspection practises, and there was a fella down south who kept getting me to re-clean the house at the end, untill i mentioned i would be going higher with my concerns if he kept expecting me to come back each week just to clean up after each viewing)

If you are carefull, and willing to be reasonable, you will find you tend to end up in a good situation.

So you have one example of a tenant asking you for something that was easily fixed when you made a suggestion (perhaps they just weren’t thinking when they made the , and that is supposed to indicate a “growing culture of helplessness and unreasonable expectancy that the property owner will foot the bill for everything without any requirement of common sense of minor effort from the tenant”? Doubtful.

With the amount of hoops that tenants have to jump through to get a place these days, and the high cost of renting in the ACT, I don’t blame them for expecting the landlord to do anything/everything that is required of them by law.

“As an example, I recently had a tenant request a replacement for a failing garage door remote, but when I asked her to at least see if replacing the battery would help she found that there was no fault. She would happily have cost the owner $150+ for the cost of a new programmed remote when all that was needed was to replace a $5 battery. “

This is not evidence of selfishness as you’re trying to twist it toward being, it’s evidence of stupidity.

Reminds me of someone I spoked to at a previous job who called in the actew after hours hot water line.
him: “Hey um my hot water isn’t working. I’ve just got back from holidays and have had the power off, but I’ve turned it back on now and I still still have no hot water”
me: “okay. well an after hours tech at this time is going to cost $380. I can put that through to the tech but just to check, is it a gas or electric system”
him: “electric”
me: “you know electric systems take at least half an hour to heat up right?”
him: “oh….. thanks” *click*
me: *facepalm*

VYBerlinaV8_is_back said :

I have a policy of treating tenants like clients, and making sure they have everything they need, and that any issues are fixed immediately. I also have a policy of removing dickhead tenants (which I have found happens only very rarely, mainly because I filter them out when they apply).

^This. You can spot the complainers a mile off at the inspections. My property manager has instructions to smile, nod politely and cross them off the list. Usually they’re the ones that don’t want to pay the asking rent anyway, even though there’s 10 other people that do.

As an example, I recently had a tenant request a replacement for a failing garage door remote, but when I asked her to at least see if replacing the battery would help she found that there was no fault. She would happily have cost the owner $150+ for the cost of a new programmed remote when all that was needed was to replace a $5 battery.

Quite frankly it’s none of her business if her reasonable request costs the owner $5 or $150, it’s up to the property manager \ owner to fix any problems regardless.

In regards to troubleshooting on behalf of the tenant, some people are better at it than others, and of course if during troubleshooting a problem the tenant makes a mistake and damage happens to the property you could easily imagine an owner \ property manager insisting the tenant pays for repairs.

I’m not stating that there is no such thing as a bad tenant, but is it really the responsibility of the tenant to look after the interests of the landlord? No, it’s the responsibility of the tenant to fore-fill the obligations within the tenancy agreement, nothing more, nothing less. Making sure the landlord is happy with the agreement does not fall under the obligations of a tenant.

I’m a landlord several times over, and I’ve found that it’s well worth going to the effort of finding a decent property manager. It’s also well worth going to the effort of finding and retaining good tenants.

I have a policy of treating tenants like clients, and making sure they have everything they need, and that any issues are fixed immediately. I also have a policy of removing dickhead tenants (which I have found happens only very rarely, mainly because I filter them out when they apply).

OK, I’ll bite.

I must admit to having a deep level of animus towards landlords/property managers, after the usual treatment by a series of thoughtless, greedy, vindictive low-life arseholes during my renting/house-sharing career in Canberra decades ago. I once even came close to punching a particularly obnoxious LJH guy who was so slimy he made your skin crawl. To my immense satisfaction this guy ended up on the wrong side of the law due to his shady practises. Wish I could remember his name – he was a king-size douche.

So, when I hear things are better now for tenants I say about bloody time.

However, the problem you’re describing is I think one that is affecting society across all activities – people have a massively inflated sense of their own importance and often have unrealistic ideas about the level of service they should expect in certain situations. I’ll bet there would be tenants who wouldn’t be arsed trying a new battery for the garage door remote, on the theory they’re paying so much rent it MUST be somebody else’s problem.

‘…the property owner has to deal with the same douche of a property manager…’

Yes, but the landlord appoints the property manager (or the agency that employs the manager) and has a choice. The tenant has no choice.

You talk about tenants as if they’re recalcitrant toddlers who deliberately soil their naughty corner despite being toilet trained. The best thing we ever did was to buy a house and escape the hideous rituals of inspections and property managers.

Haha, thanks mate.

Having been on both sides of the coin (tenant several times, landlord once), and considering myself to be fairly reasonable as either a tenant or a landlord, I’ve only ever ended up being properly shafted once and that was by a tenant.

As always, there’s dickheads in all walks of life. The trick is trying to manage them as best you can when contact becomes unavoidable.