#Sydney handrails capping

[winzerchallis]

https://awinzerchallis.com.au/

[prorevenge]

We need to organize the repairs? We'd be happy to do that for you.

If you're on the loo, settle in for a long one otherwise there is a tl;dr at the bottom

I need to start by saying that I live in the UK and that the UK is very friendly towards tenants thanks to the local councils (this will obviously become important later).

So myself and two friends started renting from a landlord, let’s call him Mr Muppet for now, through a letting agent, let’s call them Fuxtons. We moved into a large 3 bed flat split between ground floor and lower ground in a good part of London. It all started off well until late winter when, as I’m sure the whole world is aware, it rained in London (shock). Unlike most flat, someone had decided that making this flat waterproof was not necessary, either because they thought it would never rain in London or they were just really bad at their job. Anyway, I digress. My housemate on the lower ground floor had a light well next to his room, great for letting light in, but also great for letting water in. After a few days of heavy rain, a rather large wet patch had worked his way across the floor. Things weren’t much better upstairs with water coming through the light fitting in the Kitchen offering anyone passing a real fry up in the morning. Additionally a large stain was creeping across the ceiling (clearly from the flat roof above, again another bright idea from the architect).

So with a swamp downstairs resembling the Everglades, a Russian roulette light fitting and the impending threat of a convertible kitchen we thought it best to contact Mr Muppet.

Mr Muppet lived in Australia but I am still fairly sure that they have internet there. So after two weeks of emailing and no response we decided to email the letting agent Fuxtons, just in case they had a phone number for him. They contacted him and confirmed with us that a contractor would be on the way in the next few days. Excellent. A week comes and goes and nothing.

With my housemate now wearing wellies to get from the door of his room to his bed we feel it might be best to contact Fuxtons again. They give some rubbish back about the landlord being in Sydney and he organised a contractor blah blah blah. But we know he’s not bothered to spend any money fixing the issue. Fuxtons say there’s nothing they can do, and we should just organise it ourselves. Hmmm, interesting as we’re not allowed by law to conduct work on our property without consent, nor is the Landlord allowed to order us to carry out or organise work.

However, if they want us to organise it ourselves, we shall. After all they hadn’t specified what they wanted us to organise.

Now in the UK local councils are very friendly towards tenants and there are laws saying that they have to ensure that there is a duty of care and safety to the occupants. They also offer a lovely service where they will, for free, come and inspect the property at the request of a tenant (this is called a notice of disrepair). So we decided to take them up on this. But, we are nice tenants so we email Mr Muppet and Fuxtons to let them know that we are willing to organise for the council to inspect the property. This is met by an overwhelming silence from both parties. Cool, so they’re clearly both on board.

The lovely man from the council shows up and does the assessment. Now the UK loves a good law or two so when the council is involved they will take a note of everything. And I really mean EVERYTHING. Going from the cracked tile under the basin, the slightly wobbly handrail on the stairs to the massive wet stain in the bedroom. They will also sign off what is the fault of the tenants and the fault of the landlords (seeing as we were new to the property, everything was under his section).

The next thing is, when this report is conducted the Mr Muppet must start the work within 14 days and complete it within 53 days. So when he was emailed this report he had no recourse but to complete the works or receive an £800 fine per item that wasn’t addressed. Unfortunately for him, when he had signed the contract with us he had stipulated that there is a two month break clause that rolled from the forth of each month. Which meant he couldn’t get rid of us for a minimum of 70 days…oops. This meant Mr Muppet had to do the work even though we’d be vacating the property just 10 days after they were finished (yes we'd timed it to make sure he had to complete the work). Oh and to add further insult to injury, during this time because of the disturbances of the work we got a rent adjustment so we paid less.

By the end he had to replace every door for a certified fire door (on specific hinges), add handrails in all the bathrooms, reseal the ceiling, doors and floors in all the rooms, re-tile two bathrooms with anti slip tiles, fix the broken parts of both staircases, address all the mould growth in the apartment and clean every inch of it with disinfectant as well as nearly 50 other tiny jobs.

So we enjoyed our last 10 days in this newly finished flat but moved into a better place with an amazing landlord.

Oh and to cap it all off, during the inspection the council realised he hadn’t paid for a licence to have three people living there so he got fined as well…oops, guess he should have just fixed the walls when we gave him the multiple opportunities…

Tl;dr we tell our landlord about water coming in through the walls and ceiling and he tells us to sort it ourselves so we do by getting the council involved who find every minute detail of the property that is wrong. He has to spend a huge amount of money fixing everything else that was wrong with the property in just 53 days, for us to vacate just 10 days later.

(source) (story by PieGeters)