I just had the final inspection on my rental property yesterday and it totally sucked.
Prior to moving into the bloody place, I hadn’t rented for a long, long time.
I hope – after yesterday – that I never have to rent again.
The rental chick met me at the house and proceeded to go through it with a fine tooth comb for a full 60 minutes. It was excruciating. She ran her finger over every single surface and nit picked every single room.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if the place was a palace, but it’s not, it’s a total dump.
So I found myself arguing over whether each bit of its total dumpness had been there before I moved in or not. In every case she argued not.
Bizarrely, she didn’t notice the one way I DID desecrate the place: red wine stains on the carpet from the housewarming party. Go figure.
At one point she even insisted my rugs had left outlines on the living room carpet. The living room carpet is abysmal – stained and threadbare. I lived in the house mainly through winter, not much sun streams in … can a rug really leave an outline in six months?
The laundry is decrepit, with the bottom of the sink almost rusted away. She stood there arguing with me because underneath the rusted bit hadn’t been clean. The only reason you can see under the laundry sink is BECAUSE it’s almost completely rusted away.
Same thing goes for the bathroom. We hadn’t cleaned under the rotting sink. The only reason you can see under the rotting sink is because the skirting board thingy has fallen off and can be removed for nit picky agent inspections.
Etc etc etc.
She also pointed out every teeny weeny little weed in the scuzzy back courtyard and said they all had to go. Plus all the dead leaves under the shrubbery.
I was very smiley and polite and waved my cute puppy in her face a lot, but on the inside I was freaking SEETHING.
Blardy hell.
So today will be spent doing stupid cleaning and gardening at rental despite having already paid a freaking fortune for other people to do it for me. I suppose I could give the gardener and cleaner and earful but a) I’m not good with confrontation; and b) I think they did a pretty good job in the first place and c) I’m not entirely sure cleaners and gardeners can be recalled to the job on a Saturday with 12 hours notice and the keys have to be returned by this afternoon.
Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh.
NEVER. RENTING. AGAIN.
Here’s the list from the property manager:
· Clean newly red mark on carpet in 2nd bedroom
· Repair/replace blind puller in 2nd bedroom
· Clean dishwasher
· Clean cupboard under sink, including the sink
· Clean & Dust laundry room e.g. shelves, underneath laundry tub
· Clean out toothpaste mark on drawers in bathroom
· Clean off mould around sealant of Bathroom/shower
· Have your gardener attend to the weeds in the back yard including weed spraying
· Gardener to also mow the lawn and trim any shrubbery that has grown out more
· Gardener to remove dead leaves in backyard
· Clean & dust stairs in 3rd bedroom
· Reattach any loose curtains
· Remove any cobwebs throughout
· Clean the bathroom vanity bottom where bottom timber is removable
· Patch/paint mark on dining wall (this is the one big section I pointed out to you)
· Clean around & sides of the oven
· Remove any insects/small spiders around property
It was accompanied by 10 depressing photos of the offending areas. It drove me to drink the Jim Beam cooking spirits in the pantry as the house is dry. Ewwwww. What are you supposed to drink Jim Beam with? All I had was orange juice. It didn’t go very well with orange juice.
Is that what it’s always like when you move out??
Song of the day: John Mellencamp “Pink Houses”
housegoeshome 
No, thats not what its always like. Your real estate agent is a slag!
Well that makes me feel SLIGHTLY better … but still miserable about the day ahead
I rented privately for the last 9 years. The girl’s mother was a real dinosaur. After that amount if time the mother wouldn’t release bond because I hadn’t washed the underside of the outdoor awning by hand with soap and water. 9 years of annual inspections and nothing, absolutely nothing was ever mentioned as an issue. Suddenly when vacating the bitch ‘has’ to find something. After having it pressured cleaned she still wasn’t happy and asked for $100 cleaning from the bond. I begrudgingly caved but gave her a mouthful in the process. Pity the next tenants who, I understand, will be relatives from Serbia. Like you I was (and still am) seething.
That’s outrageous that pressure cleaning didn’t satisfy her. Grrrrrr
Unbelievable! No, it’s NOT always that bad…Megz hit the nail on the head!
There are courses of action you could take but the reality is that to argue the points is more trouble than it’s worth.
Agree Geoff, so I will clean the inside myself and tell them I’ll pay whatever ridiculous price it is for their gardener to make sure there’s not a single dead leaf in the backyard.
OMG! You poor thing! Clean dishwasher…seriously!?!?
This “property manager” sounds particularly harsh. That list is insane. They can be fussy though. I paid a cleaner to do a thorough moving out clean at my last rental (as admittedly I don’t seem to see the “dirt” other people do) and come inspection time it wasn’t deemed good enough! So she told me I could either clean it again, or lose some money from my bond to pay the cleaning company the real estate agent uses. Hmmm. I opted for the second option as I just didnt want to deal with it anymore. Sometimes I think the worse the place, the fussier theu are, and there is a tendancy to blame tenants for little issues that may already have been there or that normal people wouldnt even notice or care about anyway. The finickitiness drives me insane!! Good luck!!
What happens if you don’t do it? You lose your bond? I think I’d forfeit it. They’re ridiculous demands.
Some property managers are wannabe despots. Don’t they realise that today’s tenant may well be tomorrow’s purchaser? Worst experience I ever had was with a real estate agent at The Junction. I dealt with the agency principal. I recommend anybody having protracted difficulties to get the advice and support of a tenants’ advocacy group, as I did. Even now, 5 1/2 years later, the sight of this man makes me seethe. I seem him frequently when I pick up my mail from my post office box. Depending upon my mood, I either ignore him/glare at him/say ‘arsehole’ or ‘prick’ as I walk past.
I now have an lovely elderly Greek landlady who has never done an inspection. Before she became ill, she would pop down occasionally for a chat and a cup of coffee. I only contact her in case of something urgent. My place could do with lots of fixing up but I put up with it, pay my low rent and live a very peaceful life.
Thats a good idea, leanne, therw u go alana – tell this real estate agent that u will do the ridiculous requests (or forfeit the bond), then tell her that the rental properties u may buy wont be going thru her agency… oh & also ask her if u had told her u r a journalist with an exceeeeeedingly succesful blog?? Name & shame can kill a business!!! Hahahhaa
You know you are within your rights to just sign the back of the ‘getting the bond’ back form and post it to the bond place. The real estate property manager does not need to sign it first. The bond place contact the property manager and only if they bother to dispute it, will the bond not be given back. I would do this and also do the minimum cleaning of anything you really think you missed. If you have paid for people to clean and garden it already you can take those receipts to the bond dispute and you will win. I did this once…I felt like I was in an episode of Judge Judy. I was pregnant with twins at the time too…I really looked the part! I won : )
We’ve had 3 rental homes in the past 12 or so years.
In my experience, more often than not, you get these agents that want to find small things JUST so they can look like they’ve done their job to the owner, and give the owner a nice bonus of your bond.
Currently, the place we’re in, we have had numerous requests emailed to the agent to have things fixed, but nothing happens unless it is urgent.
But then, they do their inspection every 6 months, (usually different from the actual agent), and make comment about things around the place. Funnily enough, they point out something needs fixing, and we say, “yes, we put in a request to have that fixed and the agent was contacting the owner to get the OK.”
At one stage, we had to live away from home so the builders didn’t have to pack away their tools when they were “renovating” (completely stuffing up), the bathroom. The agent “forgot” to make a note that we were out of home for 3 weeks instead of 2, and it was only a year and a bit later that we found out, when the agent sent us a courtesy message to say we were behind in rent. Actually, we were ahead in rent.
But for final inspections, first house, even though the screens on the windows were torn when we moved in, tear in the lino, the agent hit us up for both, because it wasn’t on the condition report from when we moved in.
Lesson learnt.
2nd house, place was pretty much OK, as the landlord was a neighbour, and he saw how well we looked after the place.
3rd place, well, we’ll find out soon.
Looking to move in the next few weeks/months, and there is a LOT of work that has been reported, but not fixed, as it is mostly cosmetic stuff.
The agent even left the carpet unsecured, because they want to see what the floor is like underneath the carpet after we leave. Which means the carpet get frayed on the edges and joins.
I can see us having major arguments with the agents on this place. Every 12 months or so, we get a different agent, from the same company, and noone keeps track of what was agreed to, except for us.
These are the same agents that sent an email around to all the agent’s renters, saying to make sure the agent set each person as a BCC so the email addresses didn’t get distributed to everyone else on the list. Great work, dumbarse.
Then a 2nd email saying the first one was sent by mistake.
Then a 3rd one saying that the agent was taking holidays for a week, and to contact the office if we need anything.
THEN, we hear the radio ads about how they’re soooo “professional”.
Renting sucks. Big time.
But, house prices and cost of living means, (as well as the never increasing pay packet), that we’ll never own our own home, no matter how much we want to.
I agree Steve, I will be paying MUCH more attention to the property reports if I rent again. Their latest crappy move was to accuse me of taking the batteries out of the fire alarm … which didn’t have batteries when I moved in but funnily I didn’t think to check that – silly me. So they wanted ME to pay for new ones. It’s only a little thing, but HELLO???
We had a similar experience (also with an agent from The Junction), and I was advised by the rental bond board to lodge ASAP for the bond. If your lodgement gets in first it is up to the agent to dispute it and they have to pay the legal costs, mostly they don’t bother as the tenants are more likely to win. It is such a horrible feeling though, particularly if you leave it cleaner than when you go in. We also hadn’t rented for years and couldn’t believe the way things have changed. Good luck with it.
Thanks Natalie, it’s been such a stressful experience. I think I’m letting it get to me a little too much but they really haven’t been very reasonable.