Rent unpaid for months, the property abandoned and filthy – you wonder who’d be a landlord in Queenstown.
Tenancy Tribunal official information provides nine judgments on cases between local property managers and their tenants from September 2010 to November this year.
Local renter Wayne Herbert takes the cake for the highest sum awarded against a tenant – $3005.73.
According to the judgment, Herbert did a runner from his Von Place, Fernhill property in May this year.
Not only owing $1392 in rent, Herbert also left the place in a right mess, with the tribunal ordering him to pay $1509 for cleaning, rubbish removal, lawn mowing and garden tidying.
Meanwhile, flatties Katerena Potae, Shane Yates and Te Ratima were chucked out of their Sainsbury Road, Fernhill house this August for failing to pay rent on time – repeatedly.
Queenstown Accommodation Centre “served the tenants with no less than 15 notices to remedy rent arrears between February 25 and August 10, 2011”, the tribunal says.
The trio were ordered to pay back rent of $1248.
Fernhill was also home to another couple of shockers, Tony Spence and Samuel Glenn, whom the tribunal says left a significant amount of cleaning, carpet cleaning and rubbish removal to be done before their Arawata Terrace property could be re-let.
The lads were stung $914 for the cleaning, plus $1371 in overdue rent.
Three tribunal verdicts centre on tenants reneging on fixed-term tenancies and having to pay their landlord’s lost rent.
Anna Writh was pinged last year after moving out in July from a $550-a-week Highview Terrace property she’d committed to rent until November.
Writh had actually paid up to early September but there was a further three-week delay before new tenants moved in.
Not only did Writh have to pay rent for those three weeks, the rent was lowered for the new tenants to $500 so Writh also had to cover the $50 shortfall for the remaining weeks of her tenancy – $1971 all up.
Then there’s “the careless act of the tenant who vacated the premises in mid-winter without turning off the water mains”, according to a judgment this October.
Craig Tempero had to cough up his landlord’s $500 insurance excess plus $163 to repair a burst water pipe which damaged floors and walls.
Obtaining judgment is one thing but getting paid is another, property agents warn.
Queenstown Accommodation Centre’s Allan Baillie says they only got about half Wayne Herbert’s $3005 – the $1560 covered by his bond.
Likewise, with Potae, Yates and Ratima, “we were able to make sure there was enough left in the bond that the landlord wasn’t out of pocket”, Baillie says.
Yet not everyone with a tribunal judgment against them is a tenant from hell, Resort Rentals’ Doug MacGillivray says.
Recalling a $2606 judgment against the occupant of a Wye Place, Fernhill, property he manages, he says: “She got herself into a little bit of financial difficulty and we all felt sorry for her.
“But she paid everything off, she’s a responsible person,” he says.
Your say
Is it mostly the same property management company? Are they managing badly, looking to fight in court, or just unlucky?
23 Apr 2012 04:12PMross42
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