Scamming Nurse Tenant

Hi all, we have a non paying tenant owing us $4,500 in arrears now. We have a thread in another website if anyone cares to know the history: VCAT Issues - Nonpaying Tenant - Real Estate - Home - Whirlpool Forums

Anyways we finally had our VCAT hearing and was ordered by consent of both parties to end our lease early which was supposed to be Monday last week. However she went against VCAT order so here we are again lodging another case requesting for possession order and requesting warrant of possession. VCAT this time thankfully after explaining all distress this is causing us have set another hearing date after Easter which is pretty quick considering. Since Monday we think she’s left the property vacant as we never hear them anymore (we live next door), she did not hand in keys despite repeated attempts to work around her schedule, left her belongings as per her txt msg sent last minute on the day she’s supposed to vacate and basically told us to get possession order if we want to remove her stuff, property damaged fr last inspection, hasn’t paid a single cent of rent since February, new tenants and tradies scheduled to work for repairs and clean all have been put to holt because of her still holding on to keys and not removing belongings.

Now we went through her original application to try and trace previous landlord, so decided to drive past her last known address this week as its only a block away from our house. Lo and behold her car and her mom’s car are parked inside this property, which is the last previous rental address she declared in her tenancy application. Now we have a feeling that this person is letting her property to relatives and subsequently renting a place for her family (her and 2 teenaged daughters) as she may have a stronger chance to apply with her job as a full time nurse with not many dependents. She gets rental income from relatives to stay at her place whilst renting basically for free at the expense of others.

Our primary focus is to get possession order that’s not questionable and perhaps if we strike lucky get the rental arrears, but this goes deeper than money for us already. This tenant is very cunning and knows the system all too well. She scams her way in targeting self managing landlords, surely have done this several times considering her brazenness to do everything she’s done to us, and scarily knows all too well how to game the system. Considering her profession confirmed employment by hospital she works in, less dependents, and with her mother acting as last landlord giving glowing references on her tenancy application, she would look too attractive for any self managing landlords out there. We will be listing her in TICA but is there anything more we could potentially do to stop this modus she is doing?

 

1. landlord insurance
2. be very very wary of "professional tenants" if you are a self managing landlord. They prey on the private system as they know the system better than most private landlords.
3. just get a property manager

Do register her, do follow the court system and best of luck to you

If you're feeling super ****** knock on the door and threaten to turn up to her work every day and make a scene until she pays but to be honest she knows where you live and it's best not to get into a vindictive situation. Do the legal thing and move on and think twice about handling it yourself especially without landlord insurance

 

Sorry to hear your situation, i have been the victim of professional tenants even with a pm.
But in hindsight the $20 per week you saved self managing , seems like a small cost now

 

She's a pro. Try and garnish her wages for the outstanding money.

If you every get sick, avoid the hospital she works at like the plague. God knows what she'll get up to while your under.

 

Thank you. We do have landlords insurance. If she knows where we live, we also now know where the property she/her mom owns. We are practically neighbours believe it or not just a block away.

I just wonder whether this is a criminal act she is doing, trying to obtain advantage of herself by defrauding her application and to cause loss to others... and yes we’re better off moving on after everything... but she can continue doing this. Somehow letting go of the matter doesn’t make it right.

 

I'm so glad you have landlord insurance. You need to make sure you take every step properly as you have a duty of care to the landlord insurance provider to minimise their losses.

There probably is a criminal element of it but I'm not sure if the police would do anything so it would be up to you to get legal advice/advise on that element.

 

I have a feeling what her real intent is for leaving her belongings. She’s testing our patience far more thinking that we will throw her stuff in a whim where she could then claim for monetary compensation to replace her junk for new if we remove her stuff before getting possession order especially now that she’s out of sight. We truly don’t think she intends to take it until the last 28th day that we can hold on to it as per law. She’s trying to make us lose financially as much as she can possibly get us into.

In an attempt to retrieve our keys last week we added in the msg that we now know she fraudulently made up her tenancy application which could nullify/void our contract in the first place. This somehow struck a cord to her because she came back to the property within 30 mins of sending it but was too quick to leave before we could go and confront her. Perhaps she came in only to check if we changed locks after she abandoned the place as she threatened us with restraining order if we illegally evict her but we never did. Despite rising high blood pressure, we try not to do anything that could jeopardize the case and always calling consumer affairs and/or VCAT before making another move.

 

You've got 4 more days until the 28th, you live next door? I'd be tempted to run out today for a few security cameras, placed on your own place but covering next door. That way, if she decides to be a complete idiot and trash the place on the 28th you might catch some of it on camera? Not sure of the legalities, best to check first, but as long as they are set up and installed covering mainly your place and "happen" to overlap some of the key areas of next door you might be alright?

 

Hi Propagate, our next hearing is this coming Friday. By 28th we mean, 28 days for her to collect her garbage. Once we’re granted possession order / warrant of possession, we still have to contact consumer affairs to assess value of all stuff she left, then as LL we are obligated to safely put it in a secured storage facility, where we pay for all these removal and storage costs. We will have 7 days fr then to inform her of place of storage and costs incurred where she’d be able to collect everything only after she pays all removal costs (nothing rent arrears related). She will have 28 days basically from then to organize collection and will not be able to dump everything to the pit until then.

Cameras are in order. We live in a court for many years and so’s everyone in the neighbourhood. Over Easter weekend we have informed them and all are happy to be in the lookout for any odd things or strangers visiting our court.

We’ve already surrendered to the idea that she’s trashed the place before leaving. Nothing we can undo. We just need to get ourselves together to prepare for escalating this case if ever as at the moment we cannot even get in to the property and see actual state after her departure.

 

been in a similar situation with personal property being left after absolutely trashing the house

avoid the temptation and satisfcation of disposing her property out of retailiation,
if she claims for them later, then you can be liable (has anyone had any experiencebeen forced to replace/compensate a tenant before for this?)
keep the stuff as per the legal requirement, and as soon as the period has passed, get your satisfaction then!

i had great pleasure in disposing of my tenants personal stuff, including photos and kids stuff, whilst I had to pay for most of the repainting, recarpetting my IP, whilst I had to keep it the legally required minimum

 

I think installing security cameras in a tenanted property - with the intention that they be monitored/ viewed by a non-resident landlord - would be considered an invasion of privacy...

 

You'd be surprised what you are allowed to do with respect to photographing people/things etc. I found this out years ago when the property we were renting was put on the market. I came home to a 10 foot poster on the front wall of the living room complete with all my high end cinema equipment on proud display for the whole suburb. I asked them to ask the owner to supply a new photo without our stuff in it and have a new board made, they wouldn't and said it was their right to do it. I checked, they were correct. It also lead me to read up a bit on who/where you could photograph people, I was very surprised what you are allowed to do. Might be different now. In our case, I covered the board up every night (became on on running battle with the agent uncovering it each day) and I wrote to the agent explaining that should we be burglarized during the campaign and those items stolen, if the insurance declined to pay based on us advertising to the world what was in there then we'd be looking at holding the seller responsible. They didn't give a ****. Sorry, wasn;t meant as a thread hijack, just highlighting how surprised we were when we researched what you are/aren't allowed to film and photograph.

 

Who gave you this advice, that you should accuse her of application fraud, and that if she'd engaged in it, it would void the tenancy contract? What precisely is the fraud that you're alleging?

 

It is legally OK to take pictures of people in the public domain. For example if I want to take a picture in a park which has strangers in the background or foreground - that’s fine.

Back in 2015 there was a loophole in NSW law:
We’re for Sydney | Daily Telegraph

Might have been fixed by now.

 

Fraud - wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.

How do you classify if a person claims in their application that she has a long rental history, been renting for 3 yrs (not her mother/relative) in fact using a someone else different as a reference, and said that they had to end lease because of relatives of owner taking over the property. We used this ex “landlord” as part of our reference check that made an impact in our decision to approve her application. Fantom ex landlord says she has 3 properties and never had any problems with these tenants who is renting one of her 3. She claims they always pay on time, that they’re keeping the place reasonably tidy, only problematic period she could think of was from when she had to help them with the upkeep of the yard. And now finding out that she is staying at the exact same address together with her mother after being booted by vcat... perhaps temporarily until she manages to find another victim. Doesn’t any of that make you suspectful? This claimed address has never been rented out in real estate website since bought back in 2008.

About nullifying/voiding the contract, common sense should make it but whatever i’m not after proving grounds to void contract, what she’s done is irreversible, and our lease has legally ended as ordered by VCAT.

Anyways if we do decide to pursue this any further it will definitely be after we’ve gotten possession back and after we’ve cleaned up the mess she’s left. And then... we try to think of retaliation. We’re not planning to just stop from here. This person is someone who is not at the brink of homelessness but a cunning b**ch who deliberately do these things to either save on rent to enable her to save money for herself and her kids overseas travels, or someone who is getting rental income from her own property and still do this to save even more money to pay for her family’s lifestyle.

 

Maybe her mother is renting too.

 

Precisely right. None of these have substantial evidence to prove claims hence this discussion being opened. All we are happy about is that we were able to trace her somehow and not someone who disappears off fr the planet. Better for us for when serving notices in the future and/or when we hire debt collecting agent and for our insurance company.

How i wish we could dump her stuff including her weeks long of uncollected rubbish in front of her now “rented” property... but we know we cant.

 

Look, based on other things you've said, I think this person sounds like a horrid tenant, and I'm sorry you've had this experience, truly. I just think it's best to deal with it professionally.

It is all suspicious, but that's all it is, and you still have to be professional.

Perhaps I'm not understanding what you've said, but all the 'story' that you're telling yourself is what you're assuming is what's happened, not factual. You might be correct, but you don't have evidence of it. And there's a distinction between the information she put on her rental application - which she's responsible for - 'X was my previous landlord, these are their details' - and the story that that person told you, which she's not responsible for, however much of a lie it was. If she was previously 'boarding' with her mother and put her mother down as her previous landlord, I doubt a tribunal would find that was deceptive, anyway, unless you specifically asked if there was any relationship.

Then going beyond all that, even if the reference part was entirely invented, in order for it to amount to 'fraud', it has to meet the specific legal definition, which I doubt it does. Possibly some kind of misrepresentation, but unlikely fraud. (The ability to enter into a rental contract is available to pretty much anybody, I doubt it meets the test of being an 'advantage' or profit.)

And in order to be entitled to void the contract, you'd have to show that the bit that was a lie - the relationship between the two - was crucial to your decision to enter into the contract, ie that if everything else - her employment, financials, what the referee said, etc - was the same, but you'd known that the referee was her mother, that you wouldn't have entered into the contract. If there's no other red flags in her application, that's going to be hard to establish. And as you point out, it's irrelevant as the contract's been terminated, anyway. So why are you making such 'threats' to her? It's pointless, and only weakens your position as it shows you don't know the law and are getting emotional.

You're in a contract with them, not an interpersonal relationship, so if something goes awry, you have to deal with it in a detached, professional manner, according to the laws of contract and relevant statute, not as you would if a friend or relative had deceived or betrayed you. I have had (many) awful tenants myself, and been emotionally impacted. I'm not an emotionless zombie - I get that it's awful. It causes you to question what kind of people would do this to others and so on.

But if you allow that to colour how you view the situation, and affect your decision-making in resolving the issue, it will always come back to bite you, either through poor decision-making, at QCAT (landlords who overstep their powers aren't treated kindly), or just in the emotional toll that being a landlord takes on you.

Take a deep breath, try and get out of this with minimal expense, do everything by the book and hope you can make an insurance claim, and move on with lessons learned. Abandon thoughts of vengeance. List on TICA if you can - last I knew I didn't think private landlords could, but I may be wrong - and pursue the debt if you can do it without disturbing your peace of mind. But just think of it as pursuing your contractual rights and doing business; put any thoughts of 'revenge' against this woman out of your mind. Forget her.