Going to the Tribunal - will be interesting.

Wylie

Congratulations to you and your mum - she must be very relieved that it has turned out in your favour! You've both put a lot of work into this submission, by the sounds of it - so go out and celebrate!!! :D

Cheers
LynnH
 
My mother is being taken to the tribunal this week after holding back a few hundred dollars for cleaning of an IP.

A good moral win no doubt for your mother, and good for upholding community standards and principles, but I could never reconcile the economics of similar situations that I have been involved with.

Given the hours / days of work, stress, preparation, angst and business interruption whilst submitting applications / evidence and attending tribunal hearings....what type of hourly rate did the decision to award 'a few hundred dollars' equate to ?? 10 / 15 per hour. I know PM's charge at a rate of ~ $ 85 per hour plus GST for attending on your behalf. It didn't seem like good business.

Do you think she will change her attitude and improve her cleaning standards when next living in some other Landlord's IP. Given the tenants reaction to the decision as reported, probably not I'd suggest.

As I said, it never re-conciled for me on a business level. Big picture feelings and moral outrage aside.

Root cause for me - when the brown hits the fan in situations like this, the legislated maximum 4 week Bond simply is woefully inadequate.
 
Thanks everybody. It is a lovely feeling, and my mother has been a bit stressed about having to face them, because the woman was pretty nasty on the day of handover. I don't know why she was defensive and nasty but I can only assume it was because she knew she had left a filthy house. There could be no other reason, because my mum had gone out of her way to give them extra time to settle on their house and they were paying way under market rates.

My mother is a very accommodating landlord until someone does the dirty on her, like these people did. Then she is like a terrier. It was great to be a witness to how the court works.

No doubt, if the judgement had gone their way, we would have been disappointed but for them to slam down their folder and stalk out was so rude, and I'll bet the judge had a little smile to himself and thought "serves you right" just as we did.

Those judges must put up with some rubbish on a daily basis.

I just hope they don't harrass my mother. They did call her at 7.30am Sunday morning when this was being mediated and were very nasty and abused her and hung up on her, but they would be foolish to try anything funny. But there are lots of foolish people around.

Anyway, great result, and thanks for your moral support.

Wylie

P.S. Just read your post Dazzling, and they have bought their own place, so they can pig it up as much as they like, and I suspect it will be filthy before too long. My 11 year old keeps a cleaner room ...... well not really :) And mum self-manages, so just a bit of typing involved. I don't think I would want to pay someone to attend court for a couple of hundred if we were paying a manager.
 
great result - not that we expected anything less :rolleyes:

judges and insurance companies must get tired of seeing these things day after day - i've just put in an insurance claim for $6,500 worth of carpet left absolutely hideous by tenants (it was only 18 mths old!) with huge stains of every colour imaginable (hate to think what half of them are) in every room ... the insurance company just wanted some photos emailed thru along with the original carpet bill. they then said to send the new carpet bill direct to them and are not even bothering to send an assessor out.
 
I once knew a family (friend of a friend) consisting of the father and two sons.

Every time I went around there, the place was an absolute pig stye (?). Litrerally dirty clothes everywhere, kitchen had old food everywhere, the stove had caked on grease and rice between the plates, the toilet just had roll after roll of discarded toilet paper rolls thrown on the ground, shower etc. absolutely filthy, and pretty much impossible to move around the place without pushing crap out of your way.

Back then I thought - "my God, how can people live like this!"

Looking back now I just think - "what the hell was the PM doing?!" as this sort of mess was impossible (and never done) to clean for an inspection. How can some PM's let people treat a property like that?!

And this was not just one house, it was 4 or 5 houses over the years before they finally bought their own - perhaps because they were finally 'black booked' by a PM in the end I guess? I shudder just thinking about it!
 
Excellent result for your mum Wylie.

Goes to show the good guys do win.

I hope her next landlord experience is as harrowing.
 
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