Non payment of rent - Responsible party

QbiK - did she not sign the bond guarantee bond form? Or did she pay cash? Was bond lodged?

You are learning some very steep lessons there.
There may not be a bond to claim if it was not signed but I'm trying to work out which one was not signed.

 

No we have a signed bond agreement and we will obviously get that back. I'm saying she hasn't signed the bond form for return of money as she will not return calls and so forth.

Everything was done by the book, problem is I didn't have a very good insurance policy (my fault)
I feel that 4 weeks bond paid upfront really is not enough for cases like this. I understand that it's hard for tenants to come up with this never mind 6 or 8 weeks. But when it legally takes you 3.5 weeks to evict a tenant it gives you no leeway if they do any damage, or even don't clean the house.

 

So there is no legal Avenue for enforcing payment of debts. I would of thought there would have to be some process leading up to a criminal trial and judgement if this sort of thing keeps happening.

 

There is but its not a simple process necessarily. You need to know where they or their assets are for a start. Otherwise its often not worth the time and extra costs.

 

Also they need to have money and assets.

Not a good situation at all.

What state are your properties in Q?

 

I would take home two important lessons from this thread.
1. Have a (good) property manager.
2. Have a (specialist) insurance in place.

 

Unfortunately that is the expensive lesson being learned here.

With those 2 things in place your risk in leasing your properties should be almost zero.
A good pm would ensure that insurance claims are awarded by managing it well in the first place with all checks in order.

 

On the subject of tenants being made accountable, as well as landlords receiving funds of course, I read a good article yesterday. This is from England so obviously things are very different, but it's an interesting article just the same. It would be good to hear from those in property management here if any of this has parallels in Australia. The link to the article is below:

Landlord Insurance News | Buy to Let Property Insurance | Simple Landlords Insurance

 

It seems like they are debt collectors with power from the courts. Not sure if they do that here but every landlord should have landlord insurance and not have to worry about debt collection.

 

On the claim form there's information about the tenants on there (so that the insurer can try chase them to reimburse themselves). I always put as much as I can on there to help them out

 

Carl Agar who wrote the article is a landlord in England and a representative of the National Landlords Association (NLA), he's just giving some advice regarding how he goes about chasing debts (in England of course).

 

I manage my own properties, so I'm not worried about that part. Even if I take into consideration the losses on both properties I'm still ahead by a hell of alot.

The insurance one definitely is a good lesson I'll be reading through all fine print from now on. All policies certainly aren't created equal.

 

this is true QbiK and even more so for building policies. landlord claims are easy enough but it's difficult to tell exactly what you are covered for on building insurance.

The floods in Brisbane a few years back illustrated the caution with building policies, property managers there were quickly discovering that even though is states "flood cover" on a policy, sometimes there is some legal wording somewhere else that cancels out the flood cover. People who assumed were covered were not.

The only way you can really be sure is to have a solicitor read through the policy.

We personally do not do a lot of building cover in our office, it's not something you use often but good to know what you are covered for should you ever need it.

 

Yeah, there were plenty of people who thought they were covered, but had a nice time trying to get the insurance company to pay.
Everyone assumed it was just people without insurance.

 

Are landlord insurance that infallible? Insurance companies usually find loop holes and fine print to not pay landlords for damages and rent arrears. If you make any claim, you must first pay $300-500 excess, discover limitations on what and when you are covered for, and then pay a higher premium on insurance the following year.

In my experience, good real estate agents are a rarity, and even if you find one, you not necessarily get that person always looking after your property.

I was told the only way to chase any owed money from tenants, you must register at the local court for a garnishing order and apply to their bank accounts and salaries. You can get an order that applies to multiple banks if you don't know who they are with. Even then you must apply for multiple garnish orders as one notice only works for one time. But the good part is you have 12 yrs to continually chase them until all money is paid.

Any thoughts or experience out there in getting tenants be evicted and pay rent arrears?

Sure there are bad landlords and good tenants, but landlords are generally screwed! You can do everything by the book and still not make some nightmare tenants happy. The tribunal is so biased against landlords it's a joke. You turn up cos your tenants don't pay rent, but you are spoken to like you re the criminal rather the other way round.

They say you can not use lawyers, fair enough...I can't afford one, so you get advice from fair trading and do as much reading as you can. On the day, they talk to you like you re an idiot, they are rude, using legal terms, expecting you to act like you re a lawyer, expect you to know all the rulings. They don't explain any of their rulings cos they say they're not allowed to give advice, but you should accept their word cos they re real barristers in a pretend courtroom. Is it fair that you're expected to deal with them like a lawyer when you re just a lay person? Is that an abuse of power by an "authoritive person"?

You're also expected to contact fair trading reg nCAT tribunal processes and the tenancy rules... NCAT directs enquiries back to fairtrading. But when it comes to crunch time , you find the ruling are not necessarily interpreted the same way! Is it fair that the only support given to landlords is thru fairtrading, but this body has proven at numerous times given wrong information which does not help the landlord's case at tribunal, compared to the higher level of support that tenants get. Even staff at nCAT says, we are not the same as fairtrading, when questioned why the process and interpretations are so different!

I don't understand how landlords are expected to accept orders from tribunal, when their salaries are being paid by the interests from tenant bonds, and so can never be seen as truly independent?

Is it time that landlords establish their own lobby group or unions?
People tend to misguidedly think that cos you re a landlord, you're filthy rich. Quite the contrary, we work hard like everyone else to pay the mortgage and save for our kids. We also need support just like in any other work Union.. A voice.

Any opinions?

Cheers!

 

Firstly welcome to the forums! It sounds like this is a topic you feel strongly about - what's been your experiences?

Overall your grievances seem like they could be addressed by learning more about the tenancy laws and processes. While it can be quite a complex area, I think the decisions are largely consistent and in line with the law.

I agree that fair trading or its equivalent in each state are pretty bad at giving advice, but that's to be expected because they aren't lawyers or even legally trained. If you want proper advice, you will have to pay for it - it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive just to get advice on legal merits and how to run a matter.

 

the process for me from experience.

1. Rent Arrears talks to the tenant
2. More than 2 weeks payment (send a letter of reminder registered or express post)
3. Usually paid but no Comms (apply for VCAT)
4. Go to VCAT get eviction order, plus damages (time to attend hearing, parking) and request bond. ALso ask for the ability to blacklist the tenant
5. Normally tenant usually vacates, if not get it registered in magistrates court and then get a sheriff in to do the eviction.
5. Use the bond for repairs (any damages) and then apply to insurance subject to policy
6. Any additional payments (even excess - try to recoup it from the tenant - go find a debt collector) - again depending if the tenant has money or not ( if not i would not bother and write it off)

 

Thank you for the feedback , unfortunately my experiences are covered in my tirades above.

I did contact the tenants when rent was late, first it was excuses, then broken promises, then avoidance, followed by accusations that we are hassling then, and finally verbal abuse and threats of physical violence towards us. We have videos of them swearing and screaming in our face at last property inspection when police presence was required.

Advice from fairtrading was that we should try evicting them based on breach of contract, ie freq late rents, verbal abuse, hassle, intimidation etc by tenants and financial hardship to landlord. We did that, at tribunal member says he finds no evidence of intimidation or threats of violence, though he refused to look at our video evidence and barely looked at our witnessed statements, says it's just an argument between two parties. Is it called an argument, if someone starts swearing offensively at you and invades your personal space, before you even stepped through the front doorway or even utter a single word.

Member says he finds no evidence of financial hardship, but won't explain what kind of evidence he would except... Says for him to tell me he would have to charge me an expensive fee first! How many people can say that a cut back of $420 a week from their budget is not painful? I have a modest income, but I pay all my bills and live within my means. The tenants' daughter goes to an expensive private school, my daughter goes to a local public school. "They've got a new jeep", while my family drives a 10yo Honda Civic.

Realistic what evidence of financial hardship am I supposed to provide, mortgagee possessions from the bank cos I can't meet my loan repayments? Bankruptcy? Do my family and I have to be at beggar's doors to be seen as having financial hardship? That's why I am at the tribunal, so that my family is not going to be dragged down my irresponsible tenants!

Lastly, while he dismissed my efforts to evict my tenant bases on a technically which I acknowledged. He refused to consider the breach of contract, ie not paying rent on time and maintain the 2 weeks advance. He had failed to order the tenants to pay rent, didn't even question them why they are entitled to a free ride.

The tribunal awards bad tenants who know all the loopholes, thanks to the advice they get from organisations such as the tenancy Union. All this experience has just made me resolutely more hard towards prospective tenants. If I feel myself soften, I will just remember Clive palmer and the ungrateful wretches he helped out!

 

To be honest, I don't know why you brought up things like verbal abuse and financial hardship when it sounds like it could have been a relatively straightforward termination for rent arrears. And it sounds like you didn't quite get the procedure correct for the rent arrears issue - that's the danger when you get distracted by irrelevant evidence and grounds.

Its not really a "loophole" if the tenant and the tribunal follows the law and dismisses your application because you didn't...

 

Agree with thatbum.

Also, even though their rent may be late, it needs to remain >14 days for the termination notice to remain valid.

Most of the time it is better to leave it to the property manager so you can stay impartial to the whole process.