Bad Tennent
Im not sure how to begin on here so I will start from the beginning.
I have a 4 year old investment home that I built with my father. I have had two previous tennents with 12 month leases on them. In Feb this year I went with a new agent and had a new tennent sign up for a 6 month lease as my husband and I had thoughts on selling it. The agent lead us to believe that the home was going to be rented to a nurse and her two older teenage daughters, and it was'nt until nearly a month later when we asked where our rent was that we found out he had put in a single woman with a couple of kids and her uncle was living with her. The tennent was put on a month in advance contract originally. After the original agent ended up giving us the run around with our rent which took us nearly two months to finally get the first months rent , I gave him the boot. I then took up with another agent and asked her to finally get things back on track for us with the rent, unfortunately the tennent kept giving every excuse to the agent why she was late or could not pay her rent and would tell the agent that she would be in during the week to pay it and never seemed to show up with any money, so when she ended up 14 days over due in her rent the agent served her a notice to vacate, we then had to go before Vcat and see if the judge would evict her. Unfortunately this did not happen as she brought her 6 month old baby into court and played on the judges emotions rather than try to see my financial position I was starting to get into trouble with. She put her on a rent order, she had to pay every friday before the end of the business day, $305 rent (paying and extra $25 a week to eventually get a month in advance. To me this seemed quite unreal as the women couldn't even manage to scrape together the original $280 a week. So that started on April 24th.
Since then I have been back not just for the rent but also the new agent found out that the tennent did not pay the original bond oweing and was just over $300 short in it. So we took her back to Vcat to try and have her lease end as she began damaging the property, however I wont get into that yet. We went to Vcat on May 8th and got our possession order to kick her out but as it was a friday we had to wait for monday to get the warrent for the police. Unfortunately the tennent then contacted Vcat and asked them if she could have another day in court to explain her position, I however did not attend this hearing and the judge granted her time to pay it, I could not believe it!, my agent told the judge that she was nearly $400 behind in her rent and by the time she paid the rest of the bond she would be over $700 behind in her rent. The judge dismissed what the agent said and allowed the tennent to get away with it. So since then she has been paying in dribs and drabs, mainly by going to charities and asking for money to pay the rent.
I am in the process of taking her back to Vcat for the rent again, as she is over 14 days as of last Sat the 13th of June, and this Saturday she will be $854.91 behind in her rent. Then on tuesday this week I received a call from my agent saying that a cheque turned up for $500 from the salvation Army, blowing my chances yet again to having her kicked out at Vcat next Wednesday.
So my current position now is that I have spoken to my bank and kept them informed on the whole situation since all this started and have recieved a letter from them which I will use in court to show the judge the current financial postion I have been forced into due to this tennent, also I have just done a recent inspection on the property which I was the subject to heaps of verbal abuse, which the agent was witness too. During the whole inspection I took photo's of damage done to the property which I will show on here. The front door was completely destroyed and her reason for this was that at 2am in the morning it fell off and that she had to put it back up with framing nails where the original screw were in the hinges, last time I checked there was no cyclones warnings for that area and the toilet cistern just came off the wall and the plumber who has certified the plumbing on the house has no idea on how to be a plumber (the plumber is my father), and there are holes in the walls that have been badly patched up they have dogs that have been chewing on the pipes for the outside compressor for the split sytem for the house along with them also chewing on the pipe that is used for the watertank that runs the pump for the toilet, there is water damage to the bathroom door and the main bedroom door has been split where they have replaced it with a different handle that is not even the original, they have swaped and broken things, and have said that they had too as the thing was originally broken to begin with, the original report states otherwise.
Thankfully I have landlords insurance!
Now my main aim at the moment is to try and get her out on Wednesday but I fear that even with my finanical position stated in the letter from the bank I will end up being told again that I am just some greedy landlord and that how dare I think of throwing out this woman on the street with two little kids in the middle of winter. My position is that I have two children and I stay home while my husband works but majority of the time it is his wage that ends up being used on paying the full morgage and we end up with around $100 a week to live on, I cant believe I have ended up sinking so low because all I wanted to do was have something for when we got older instead of bludging of the government when we my husband retires.
Im not sure how to begin on here so I will start from the beginning.
I have a 4 year old investment home that I built with my father. I have had two previous tennents with 12 month leases on them. In Feb this year I went with a new agent and had a new tennent sign up for a 6 month lease as my husband and I had thoughts on selling it. The agent lead us to believe that the home was going to be rented to a nurse and her two older teenage daughters, and it was'nt until nearly a month later when we asked where our rent was that we found out he had put in a single woman with a couple of kids and her uncle was living with her. The tennent was put on a month in advance contract originally. After the original agent ended up giving us the run around with our rent which took us nearly two months to finally get the first months rent , I gave him the boot. I then took up with another agent and asked her to finally get things back on track for us with the rent, unfortunately the tennent kept giving every excuse to the agent why she was late or could not pay her rent and would tell the agent that she would be in during the week to pay it and never seemed to show up with any money, so when she ended up 14 days over due in her rent the agent served her a notice to vacate, we then had to go before Vcat and see if the judge would evict her. Unfortunately this did not happen as she brought her 6 month old baby into court and played on the judges emotions rather than try to see my financial position I was starting to get into trouble with. She put her on a rent order, she had to pay every friday before the end of the business day, $305 rent (paying and extra $25 a week to eventually get a month in advance. To me this seemed quite unreal as the women couldn't even manage to scrape together the original $280 a week. So that started on April 24th.
Since then I have been back not just for the rent but also the new agent found out that the tennent did not pay the original bond oweing and was just over $300 short in it. So we took her back to Vcat to try and have her lease end as she began damaging the property, however I wont get into that yet. We went to Vcat on May 8th and got our possession order to kick her out but as it was a friday we had to wait for monday to get the warrent for the police. Unfortunately the tennent then contacted Vcat and asked them if she could have another day in court to explain her position, I however did not attend this hearing and the judge granted her time to pay it, I could not believe it!, my agent told the judge that she was nearly $400 behind in her rent and by the time she paid the rest of the bond she would be over $700 behind in her rent. The judge dismissed what the agent said and allowed the tennent to get away with it. So since then she has been paying in dribs and drabs, mainly by going to charities and asking for money to pay the rent.
I am in the process of taking her back to Vcat for the rent again, as she is over 14 days as of last Sat the 13th of June, and this Saturday she will be $854.91 behind in her rent. Then on tuesday this week I received a call from my agent saying that a cheque turned up for $500 from the salvation Army, blowing my chances yet again to having her kicked out at Vcat next Wednesday.
So my current position now is that I have spoken to my bank and kept them informed on the whole situation since all this started and have recieved a letter from them which I will use in court to show the judge the current financial postion I have been forced into due to this tennent, also I have just done a recent inspection on the property which I was the subject to heaps of verbal abuse, which the agent was witness too. During the whole inspection I took photo's of damage done to the property which I will show on here. The front door was completely destroyed and her reason for this was that at 2am in the morning it fell off and that she had to put it back up with framing nails where the original screw were in the hinges, last time I checked there was no cyclones warnings for that area and the toilet cistern just came off the wall and the plumber who has certified the plumbing on the house has no idea on how to be a plumber (the plumber is my father), and there are holes in the walls that have been badly patched up they have dogs that have been chewing on the pipes for the outside compressor for the split sytem for the house along with them also chewing on the pipe that is used for the watertank that runs the pump for the toilet, there is water damage to the bathroom door and the main bedroom door has been split where they have replaced it with a different handle that is not even the original, they have swaped and broken things, and have said that they had too as the thing was originally broken to begin with, the original report states otherwise.
Thankfully I have landlords insurance!
Now my main aim at the moment is to try and get her out on Wednesday but I fear that even with my finanical position stated in the letter from the bank I will end up being told again that I am just some greedy landlord and that how dare I think of throwing out this woman on the street with two little kids in the middle of winter. My position is that I have two children and I stay home while my husband works but majority of the time it is his wage that ends up being used on paying the full morgage and we end up with around $100 a week to live on, I cant believe I have ended up sinking so low because all I wanted to do was have something for when we got older instead of bludging of the government when we my husband retires.
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