Help! Advice needed regarding eviction and rental arrears

Resi vs Commerical, was once cashflow vs negative, don't u just love it.

You wont get me bagging resi I am having a ball.
 
** BUMP **


Seems like the emotional fluff has abated and everyone as usual has forgotten about the substance matter.


I shall update on the events following soon.


It's now been 2 months lifelonglearner since the bailiffs turfed them out.

Can you update what happened subsequently, especially regarding insurance pay outs if any and overall time / costs imposts.

Most importantly, is it rented again....and how did you go about select Tenants this time ??
 
Sorry TPFKAD and all

You're absolutely correct. Once the emotional stuff had settled and it was rerented, we calmed down and as usual the rest of life took over. It was tax time - that always takes me ages to work out (and I needed to work this out before embarking on the court case), and this was followed closely by a few weeks of emotional turmoil surrounding my late pregnancy. Anyway, I now have a 2 month old baby and am ready to get back into the fight, though there's not much time outside of looking after 4 kids aged 4 and under.

So:

Bailiffs turned them out mid June.

We waited 2 days for them to come back and get stuff. We put it all in the carport and they did 1 trip. We waited late into the night and then put the valuable stuff back inside the unit and went home. They came back at some point and phoned ranting and raving that we wouldn't give them their expensive stuff. We met them there the next day and they took some stuff. We told them to take all their stuff (smelly vomit laden, dog poo covered clothes etc. before we'd give them the valuable rented stuff). They phoned the cops a couple of times saying we were holding their stuff. The cops didn't seem too interested but the tenants where really thick and harping on about it. Finally it was getting really late and we let them at it and put the few remains on the verge near their 2nd car that had sat there for weeks. They came and took a little more stuff and left a little more. I phoned the council to clear the rubbish and they needed eyewitness written testimony as to who put it there. We brought it home (less than a trailer load) and kept it for our verge collection. I rang the council to remove grafitti on the verge - this they did immediately. Their car stayed for weeks. The tenant told us he would move it as otherwise the ranger would fine him. (!!!! don't know what difference that makes). I emailed the cops after a few weeks as their car was still there, but shortly afterwards they took it.

I paid 2 uni students to clean the flat - they spent a full day, cost just under $500 but did a brilliant job. A job that would have taken me far longer with my pregnant belly and which wouldn't have been too healthy with all the potent chemicals they used.

We spent a couple of weeks painting (paint put me on a high like gaz used in labour), recarpeting, fixing all cupboard doors, security screens (every one was ripped or broken), replacing all but 2 light bulbs, fixing the shorn off tap, removing grafitti (I couldn't get the mozzi repellant stuff to work, but found Melaleuca stuff excellent (if any of you are familiar with the Melaleuca online store, they have amazing stuff called solumel (I originally got some to get black marker off anything - it's great)) except on the patches where I'd originally tried Gumption which is my usual first resort with anything difficult.

We placed our original tenant on the real estate blacklist. Unfortunately we can't do anything about his defacto partner with the 7 children who was the cause of most of the trouble.

We advertised for tenants and chose an elderly international couple. The met the old tenant who came to check his mailbox and he also removed their application form, which they were able to get back from him. The unit is close to one son of theirs. They have a few children here, all seemed to be doing well. Some in the trades business. 2 running their own businesses. We thought immigrant couples or families (as well vetted as we could) might be better as any trouble caused or black marks on their records would be avioded I'm sure as it would make it difficult to stay/get citizenship etc. and they wouldn't know every scam in the system whereas our lovely indiginous tenants seemed to know exactly how to get out of everything and not worry about black marks as they get given everything anyway and are not in danger of being deported anyway.

We once again chose tenants ourselves. Rents had decreased in the 6 months that this was going one, so we advertised for $10 per week less. We used a few tips from you lovely people. We phoned references, viewed their current premises and son's businesses. We currently still don't have landlord's insurance. I'm still up in the air about it. It would have saved us a fair bit of money (not all), but I'm not sure of the rigmoral required to claim through them. I still intend to look into it, but once again am becomming complacant with tenants who look after the place and PAY.

We took our time choosing tenants which we've never done in the past. We have been firm with them from the beginning which is against our nature (but I'm trying to remember that this is a business and with the amount of time it seems to take me at bad times, is like a part time job for me). We took photos of everything beforehand and my husband went through the property condition report with them in person (and I think from memory using a tape recorder and further evidence if anything goes foul) and ensured they sign it.

The front door needs stripping and painting which the strata company said they'd organise in a week - this still has not been done.
We have received over $1000 in bills from the strata company. This I am still wondering about. $300 to repair the broken light at the entrance to the driveway ??? $500 to repair a door and flyscreen to our unit (which was done by us) - we suspect they mean the unit opposite, but $500? You could buy new ones for that. Also, I need to investigate what we're liable for. The damage was apparantly (not seen) done by a friend and the son of our former tenant. Bearing in mind that the lease specified ONLY ONE PERSON - the tenant - was to reside there - so the son was not our tenant. So - in other words - if a friend of a relative of my neighbour (who was renting) damaged something on my property, could I get the owner of the neighbouring property to cough up? I need to read the strata act. I have decided on a no action course of action (haha) and will try to get the strata company to provide proof. Some of this should go through the insurance, which the strata company is not bothering to do obviously. A little of our damage I claimed through building insurance (still waiting for the insurance company though) and they were reluctant to deal with me as it is supposed to be the strata company dealing with them (but then you're paying $100/hr for the strata company to talk to the insurance company).
And the plumbing bill of $220 to fix the neighbours plumbing which was caused (according to strata) by our extenant. I have tried to get something in writing from the plumber who fixed it, saying what caused the problem. He has not replied.

So I have been reluctant to go back to court without knowing the full figure this has cost us yet?

We tried 3 times to meet with the tenant to get him to sign the release of bond (which we SHOULD have done when he was coming back to pick up his junk from the carport of the unit). He is now working up north, is hardly ever in Perth and has stood us up the one time we agreed to meet him somewhere to get him to sign the form and give him a pile of mail. I was hoping the mail would be a draw card - obviously not.

We had calls from the appliance rental company trying to find him and the new tenants had trouble connecting the electricity as the old ones had never paid, had not disconnected and has connected the electricity in their second name with a misspelt surname. (Do you not need ID to connect electricity?)

Anyway, I'm not at the point to go back to court to try to get some of the money back. I'm not sure where to begin. I will have to figure out the correct forms and the correct things to ask for in the forms as it all takes so much time and money if you get it wrong - and if we get it wrong it may blow our chance to get anything. We still have the court order for the fees trying to evict them. I'm still not sure what I do with the court order to get him to pay. A piece of paper telling them to pay I now realise means essentially nothing to them.

This has rambled a lot but help me sort things out in my mind - thanks.

TPFKAD - time it's taken - I have no idea. Over 200 hours so far including time taken on this forum looking for info pre-court, time taken at court and the time taken to clean the unit and repair it, look for new tenants, sort out all the expenses for tax etc.

Costs - We roughly think the experience cost us $10000-$11000, which we couldn't wear next time if it happened again too soon and so it does make me think more about landlord's insurance. This includes the $1000 it cost for carpet installed and paint (we did the painting). We could have possibly had the unit cleaned but the carpet already had a few little rust stains from an earlier tenant and I really thought that rather than having to have the unit empty a few years done the track to spruce it up, I'd rather to do now while it was empty waiting for various things to be fixed and hopefully attract a better tenant with a better looking property.

Any advice from here will always be welcome.
 
Oh, at the eviction, we changed the lock ourselves and put a deadlock on the back door (as the handle was now broken anyway). In hindsight I sould have asked for the keys as we still have the lock and the next time a tenant does this on another property I could just put this lock on instead of buying another new one. Hey I could even have a roaming set of locks if we ever manage to buy more properties - sobering thought.
 
lifelonglearner - thank you SO much for sharing your experience. This forum really has heard it all! I thought my experience was the **** end of property investing with tenants from hell.

Maybe we can organise a double book deal ..............:D
 
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