New rental laws smoking inside home (VIC)

Hi

I have a rental rented to a friend but still officially through an agent I had to go fix something there myself and noticed the house and furniture stinks of smoke

Also said friend admitted it to me by mistake by saying they burned their own couch by falling asleep with a ciggerette inside

I tell my agent to get evidence of discolouration of walls so if I need to paint I can use this as evidence for the bond

My agent tells me

"unfortunately now with the new legislation that has come out from the 29th March 2021, we are not allowed to question if the tenant smokes inside or outside and they are legally allowed to do what they want. If this is questioned by us it can be taken as discrimination and we can get in a lot of trouble. "

 

The agent is probably right, but I think the real problem here may be that you've leased the property to a friend.

For some this will work well, but often it leads to the friend taking advantage of you (and the property). I've seen people loose the friendship and be left with a damaged property.

 

Yes very regretful now

I don't believe my agent is right in "they can do whatever they want" I think it's just thrown in the too.hard basket personally

 

IMO the new rental laws are heavily in the tenants favour. The agent is probably correct in that they can do what ever they like.

 

You probably couldn’t stop them smoking even under the old laws.

Lessors could never really control how their tenants lived except to not breach the standard tenancy obligations.

 

Yeh true

But I just asked for evidence of it. So I can have it to use if I need to buy new paint and re-paint thw whole house just after a few years of being a new house

I am insured with EBM. If something happened like I couldnt get the bond back to buy a lot of paint, can landlord insurance cover me for this sort of thing?

 

What's in the lease agreement? I have seen many leases which prohibit smoking inside the house - if I am smoking in a house after signing such a lease I will be breached for this - despite being well within my rights to smoke anywhere I like other than "No Smoking" areas?

 

This is now old though from 2018 and they are on a month to month lease now. So I have to check with my agent whats on the lease. I dont even have anything written because they are on a month to month
So I should get them to go on a new 12 month lease....

 

To me it sounds like they are in breach of the lease agreement.
How you can prove this is another matter.
But am interested to know - there's no "law" against smoking in a property I rent. So does me signing a lease which states otherwise, override the law and my liberties?

 

I just spoke with consumer affairs

You can still put in a rule for tenants not to smoke inside and this would still be classified as a breach

They also dont look at this rule as smoking inside as "discrimination" either so wrong again

So you can still put in a breach for smoking inside the home if your tenant has agreed to it

If the tenant goes on a periodic lease the original rules from the first lease still apply

This is the info I got from consumer affairs
So my agent is not telling me everything accurately

 

My tenant was smoking cigarettes and using drugs inside the house, yet the PM was reluctant to breach them. With the new rental laws, PM has to go through more hassle to prove serious damage and claims. It's a balancing feat between making both tenants and landlords happy.

 

What annoys me though is when I contact consumer affairs they tell me the complete opposite of what my agent is telling me

I just think they dont want to do it as its more work or difficult

 

Agree that this is more work for your PM. To be fair, it is not easy to prove "serious damage" either.

 

As far as I know, using drugs in still an illegal activity, which is ground for eviction.

 

I thought so too, and wanted to use this as reason to evict my bad tenant. However, my PM brushed it off saying that it's "common activity" and even though the house reeked of drugs stench, there was nothing much she could do about it.

 

Time to show her the door? Literally?

 

She is the improved version of the previous PM who brought in the nightmare tenant. Door + Garbage truck were shown to the previous PM.

 

a) Holdover is holding over on the terms of the expired lease subject to the terms of holdover in the lease. It is up to you if you will require the tenant to enter into a new lease, continue on holdover or to vacate
b) Weekly checking of smoke detectors is excessive - there is no requirement to do so. How often do you check yours?
c) How do you raise a pot plant 20cm off the floor and how often?
d) Tenant is able to source a replacement from wherever they like and are not tied to using your PM & their services. The cost of replacement is pro-rata and only for the balance of their lease term.

 

Lol.... You know how to pick them, aren't you?
I moved to self manage cause I feel they are really not doing anything even remotely close to helping me.

 

Pointy end of the stick, if it can be cleaned you need a report from cleaner who can be a good witness too if required to support your compensation claim for cleaning, and/or, if it can't be cleaned and needs to be repainted, some thing + quote/invoice for repainting to remediate the damage etc. Here's one I did recently: