Property flooded - new advice

[alex76]

I am a tenant and I renting the property through real estate agent. Last week I discovered that carper in a living room is wet. I reported the issue to the real estate agent. But they do not treat this as an emergency case.
There is a suspicion that it is a burst water pipe causing leak. By today over half of a living room has been affected, carpet is wet and extremely smelly. A living room has became absolutely uninhabitable. It has been almost 5 day but the issue has not been resolved.

Maybe tomorrow the leak will be fixed. However, the agent does not want to do anything about wet and smelly carpet which obviously has to be replaced because of potential health risk.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Can I terminate my lease because the property became uninhabitable?
Can I ask for any compensation for inconvenience caused, for example free rent until the issue fully resolved?

 

[BMan]

is all your correspondence in writing?
write an email to the PM that you will not be paying rent until this is issue is addressed. it might get them to hurry up on it.
if they take you to VCAT for not paying rent the tribunal should be on your side.

or take them to VCAT

 

[Doovalacky]

write an email to the PM that you will not be paying rent until this is issue is addressed.

Do not do this. You must have a court order before you can legally stop paying rent.
You can write a letter demanding compensation, which as long as you claim a reasonable amount will be most likely granted if it goes to court. Particularly the delay to fix a water leak would cause issues for them.

It is possible grounds for a break lease, but I would be contacting local tenancy board/VCAT? for your state and doing so with the appropriate notices.

Wet carpet can be rescued. A decent wet VAC to remove the water and some heater/blowers to finish drying it out. However once mold sets in I would consider it a writeoff.
I hope its not blocked gutters back-flowing into the eave/wall cavity however.