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An Auckland landlord has been left thousands of dollars out of his pocket after a tenant asked for rent relief before trashing the apartment and leaving.
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An Auckland landlord is furious after his property was tracked and his rent went unpaid. Source: 1 NEWS
“He’s always been nice, quiet, always paid his rent on time,” said owner James Mostert.
“Very polite he even helped out at the shelter sometimes when we were working on things.”
The tenant had been there for seven years and James said he felt comfortable helping him with a rental vacation when he needed it.
However, after a couple of months, the tenant began to avoid phone calls and emails.
Early one morning, CCTV footage captured the tenant leaving with packed bags, and the next day Mostert entered the unit.
“My jaw dropped to the ground, basically,” Mostert said.
What was once a well-kept boarding unit is now a rubbish collapse.
“I was instantly thinking about how are we going to fix this. How am I going to justify $ 10,000 in arrears?
Penny Arthur of the Tenant Protection Association said this type of behavior is common.
“This is a problem that always comes up, so it’s not just in the post-Covid lockdown era,” he said.
While there hasn’t been an increase in disputes filed with the Leasing Court, he said the biggest problem in getting out of the lockdown has been a lack of communication between the tenant and the landlord.
“In some cases, misunderstanding of what was offered, what was accepted and for how long, that has been the biggest problem.”
Arthur says the best thing tenants can do to protect themselves is to make sure there are written details about the type of rent relief being offered, and whether there is an expectation that it will be repaid over time.
If a landlord discovers they have a tenant who owes rent money, their message is simple: catch up as soon as you can, because delays do more harm than good to everyone involved.
“It also makes tenants more vulnerable because they are now in a position where they have huge debts that they can’t really pay.”
Brooke Stanley Pai of Auckland Action Against Poverty said similar problems had been happening long before the pandemic.
“The reality is that people are really stressed,” he said.
“I think that not having enough money to pay rent, incurring rent arrears in addition to everything that happens in people’s lives, doesn’t help people’s situations and, in a way, drives the context why people can’t make these decisions for themselves. “
Meanwhile, Mostert doubts the lost rent will ever be paid.
“The chances of recovering it are practically nil, but we will try to obtain an order from [Tenancy] Court and file something with the collection agency, just to get it done.
“What we don’t want is to do nothing and then he goes and does it to someone else, at least if his name is in the system, he tries to go to another place, they will pick him up and he will not do it. Able to scam another person “.
