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Thank you to everyone who has commented on my rental housing dramas over the past few weeks and days! It’s very much appreciated 🥰! The latest news is we had the VCAT hearing today (Tuesday ) with our new property manager about our new rental (how we got given a lease and they wanted to void the contract due to finding out illegal information about us from our current nightmare property manager even though they had signed it 2 weeks prior to finding out the illegally gained information) and as usual, they were represented by a person from the REIV (the lead body for real estates here in Victoria). They were also represented by the same person last Wednesday which we won that case. Anyhow, round 2 today and once again, they lost as the representative tried to tell the VCAT member how we lied on our rental application about where we were living which they believed should be a reason to make the lease void. Slight problem- the representative had once again used the wrong parts of the residential act (they referred to fines for landlords and real estate staff/agents) and was told that there is nothing in the laws to stop tenants from lying/not telling the truth about their current/previous addresses and that the case was subsequently dismissed by VCAT. That didn’t impress the property managers representative who said there should be a way to stop this from happening so landlords don’t have to deal with potentially bad tenants but the VCAT member said under the eyes of the law, it’s only landlords and real estate people who could get fined for not telling the truth about all things property and residential matters and to cop it sweet. The representative did say to my housemate who attended the hearing via phone that we had better make paying our rent our main priority so the new landlord didn’t get ‘stuck with bad tenants’ for the 12 month lease. Little did she know that my housemate and I had been able to finance an extra 2 weeks rent so we’d always be in front which I paid an hour after the hearing to our new rental. Once again, another win for the underdogs at VCAT today and proof that hiring professionals who are meant to know the laws and pride themselves on knowing all things VCAT and winning, to represent property managers don’t necessarily win cases. Our lawyers did tell us they could understand why we had to lie about our current address and that our safety and serious homelessness risk was paramount because of our nightmare property manager and landlord and supported us in our decision to do this. It also taught our new property manager a lesson in that once a lease is all signed by all parties, it is deemed executed and can’t be revoked, even if other new information comes to light after this is signed. As it is, the information the new property manager illegally obtained was incorrect and was just our current property manager/landlord (most likely property manager) causing trouble for us as she said she would yet the new property manager never asked us about it and never had our consent to talk to them as we didn’t disclose this information to either party for obvious reasons. We just hope that our new property manager realises that we can’t be messed with in relation to all things residential laws and that we will use lawyers to help defend us should the need arise which I hope doesn’t happen. It’s a bad way to start a new tenancy but as long as we pay rent on time and maintain the property with cleaning and maintenance issues, there’s nothing they can do to end up in VCAT. We move into the property today (Wednesday) and will do a move tomorrow (Thursday) for the leftover stuff at our current property. Hopefully then, my housemate can then seek medical treatment for her health issue that’s been caused by the stress of this whole current/new housing situation that she’s been dealing with and putting off. The keys are due to be handed back on Friday - the nightmare property manager is constantly hounding my housemate via emails and calls for this to happen as soon as possible despite the lease ending Friday at 11:59pm- so that will happen at a location to be sorted out after Thursday afternoons moving situation.
Speaking of other things related to my current property, the so called homeless landlord can’t be too broke as he arranged a plumbing company to come around and want to install a new heat pump setup today(Tuesday) which I discovered after coming home from a lunch at the local bakery and seeing them in the driveway waiting for me to access the property (the current property manager and owner don’t have a set of keys to the property for some stupid reason). Slight problem with this- we knew nothing about it (landlord had arranged for this to happen but didn’t tell us) and we had no formal notice from the property manager so I told them to leave (they wanted access to the backyard and hot water service via our garage - our garage is currently full of boxes waiting to be moved to our new place and wasn’t going to happen). I told them that they could do this as of Saturday when the lease had ended and not before which they didn’t like and they said it would be an issue as they are going on Christmas leave as of Monday. Not my problem! I had my housemate on the phone telling me what to say to the plumbers as she was out shopping and I was waiting for the nightmare property manager to get on the phone and tell at my housemate for not letting them in to do the job but that didn’t happen. I’m yet to see what will happen next but that’s not our problem - follow the laws and everything will be fine- so I had another win today.
Time to go to sleep and get ready for an afternoon of moving! Nighty!
Take care!
Judi9877☺️🌻
