arghhh im so mad!!!
we broke our lease a couple months before it was to end because we bought our first home.
now i dont mind paying the fees for breaking the lease but i was told i had to pay rent till they found a new tenant to move in.. now thats fine i dont mind paying that either which is what i did. i handed the keys back on the 16th of December but i had paid rent up until the 2nd of Jan. Am i allowed to hold onto the keys while i have paid rent till the 2nd? I received a call a couple days after handing in the key and was told i had to come back and clean a few more things or they would get a cleaner and charge me $150!!!!!!! my mum and i cleaned that house top to toe immaculately!!! arghhh F*$k!! anyway i said i was at work and could only do it the next day. they told me i had to do it that day because they were going on xmas holidays and wont be back till the 5th of Jan. Now i think this is totally unfair to not give me anytime to be able to clean and save myself $150!!! so anyways the thing that ****es me off and makes me soooo mad is that after all of that. the new tenants moved in a few days after i handed the keys!!! my sis in law lives next door and told me they had been moving their stuff in. wtf??? i had paid rent up until the 2nd of Jan!! are they allowed to do this??? i rang the comsumer affairs line but they were no help..
I don't think they would be able to.
And does that mean you have to go back and clean when their stuff is in there?
How do you know they didn't make the mess!!!!!!!!!!!
Definitely contact the residential tenancy tribunal in your state! As PM said, they can't charge 2 tenants rent for the same property and the same time frame, and they can't expect you to clean when someone else has moved in!
Did you go through with the agent for the final inspection? They should have told you these things then.
Yep, they totally can not charge 2 tenants rent at the same time!
We just went through the same thing!
It may also be worth checking if they have increased the rent on the property as well, as I know in SA then if they have done this, the difference between your rent and the new rent is to come off of the break lease costs as it's seen as the landlord making a profit from you breaking the lease.
For example:
If you had 2 months to go on your lease and your rent was $100. If the landlord increased the rent to the new tenants for $110, he'd be making a profit of $10 a week.
Therefore 8 weeks x $10 is $80, which would then come off of your break lease costs. We got out of having to pay any break lease costs as the landlord had put the rent up quite substantially. We had to fight for it and almost ended up at the tribunal, but it's well worth it!
Hope this helps!
Argh real estate agents are the bodgiest people going!! DH and I have just gone through a very similar situation...
Long story short, his mum was killed in August and in her will left DH and his little brother the house she was paying off, because his brother is basically an orphan now and lives with us we decided we should break our lease and move into the house to give him something a bit more familiar and to have some more room (a 2-bedroom unit with three people, a toddler and 3 cats was getting a bit crowded)...
Anyway, we called the agent to ask about the process of breaking a lease, they told us we'd have to pay rent until they got new tenants in, as well as pay dishonour fees and advertising fees (which were looking at totalling over $500), AND we would lose our bond despite paying the fees...
Anyway, we sought the advice of a solicitor straight away as this sounded wrong to us, he advised us to STOP PAYING RENT AS SOON AS YOU HAND IN THE KEYS and then get the agent to send you an invoice for outstanding rent once they move new tenants in or the lease is up - this way they can't rort you by getting two lots of rent, and unless you are in the position to find out if new tenants move in, you don't know, so they think they can get away with not telling you and will charge you until your lease expires (and probably pocket the profit because the landlord only gets the one lot of rent).
If you know for a fact that new tenants have moved in and you have still paid rent, you MUST take this straight to the RTA or the relevant authorities (go and consult a solicitor, usually their consultations are free but they will charge for further services, at a consultation they can explain to you what avenues will be the most productive for you and you can decide from there whether you need to employ them or not), as the real estate will ignore your requests, deny any wrongdoing or just sit on your case until you give up and leave them alone.
Start fighting now, and start fighting hard - they will fight dirty and you are entitled to your rent back.
As to the cleaning, whoa... I could have written your post myself, almost! In the end, by the time we'd decided what to do about everything, we only had four weeks left on the lease so we decided to just keep paying rent (we'd lived in the new place for two months already and still paid rent), then hand the keys in on the day the lease expired - no fees, no hassles, just a few more weeks of paying rent.
Anyway, we cleaned the house from top to bottom at least twice (once when we moved out, and then again just before Christmas when we were waiting for the carpet cleaners who never showed up), so I know for a fact that the house was spotless.
I handed the keys and exit report in, and later that day got an irate call from the property manager telling me that 'the house is in an absolute state' and accusing me of causing damage to a wall in the main bedroom and not fixing it or writing it on the exit report. I explained that the damage she was talking about was there when I inspected the house before I applied for the property a year ago, and the property manager who was handling it at that time promised me it would be patched and repainted before we took up residence (it never happened, but I didn't care). I told her that I assumed it was listed on the exit report for the last tenants, because the property manager had known about it, but this new PM said the last tenants never filed an exit report and there was no knowledge of the damage.
Anyway, she then told me I'd have to come pick up the keys to clean the house within 24 hours or she'd be hiring a cleaning company and taking their fee out of our bond. I asked her to email a list of what needed cleaning to me, but she said, 'You're going to have to come get the keys anyway, so just pick the list up when you do that.'
Next morning, I went in bright and early, wondering what on earth could be messy in a house that had sat unoccupied for almost three months, and when I saw the list of what needed cleaning I nearly fell over laughing.
Apparently some leaves had blown into the carport from the trees next door, and there was a little bit of dust on the rails in the wardrobes.
And the PM was going to hire a cleaning company for THAT?
I was like, 'Sorry I don't have control over mother nature making trees shed leaves, and if you can't get a tissue and wipe a bit of dust off a metal rail yourself, then I don't know how you hold this job,' and told her it was no wonder there was a few leaves and some dust seeing as the house had been unoccupied for so long and yet we'd continued paying rent because it was the right thing to do.
I dropped the keys back on the counter and told the receptionist to pass on the message that if the PM wanted to hire a cleaning company to do two seconds' worth of sweeping, she could go right ahead, but we wouldn't be paying for it and she could watch us take her straight to the RTA if she tried withholding any of our bond. SO now I know I'm in for a long, hard wait to get any bond money back because the PM will be upset that I'm not letting her take me for a ride around the block.
What an asshat. I will never deal with LJ Hooker again as long as I live after that experience!
im sure its illegal. different laws in the uk. keep us informed. you have been given good advice. all the best huni...dont let them take you for a ride.
love rach xxx
Hi, my understanding in victoria is that a property manager must go to VCAT if there is any dispute over a bond. all residential tenancy stuff goes through vcat in victoria but not sure if property managers have some discretion. we are on the other side of the fence at the moment ie. landlords going to vcat so we can keep bond as kitchen and bathroom and garden have not been cleaned or maintained in 2 years. not sure how much disretion a property manager has to be able to charge you $150 for cleaning. they would have to show you a written quote I would think. cleaning is such a subjective thing as clean for one person may not be clean for another but I think it is mainly comparison with the ingoing maintenance report. good luck.
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grrr dodgy rental agency!!!!
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