maintenance
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“The real estate agent I’m renting through won’t do any maintenance on the property I’m in. What do I do?”

We asked Property Manager with Harcourts Mandurah, Sam Delaney for her advice on this question.

Sam said the owner is obligated to ensure that the property is well maintained. Maintenance falls into two categories: Repairs that are necessary for the supply of an essential service, and non-urgent repairs.

“If the maintenance required is of an urgent nature, for example, the loss of an essential service, I would discuss this directly with your property manager, and follow-up with an email and the company’s licensee, making them aware of the 24 hours to have the issue rectified,” Sam said.

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Other repairs that are deemed as necessary (but not an essential service,) which could cause a tenant hardship should be organised within 48 hours.

Another option may be to issue a breach notice. This gives the owner 14 days to rectify the items raised.

Failure to rectify the breach would mean an application to a court.

“Please be aware that not all maintenance is required to be carried out (i.e. cosmetic details),” Sam said.

We’ll be posting answers to reader questions every week. If you have a question you think would be interesting to see answered here, please let us know!

 

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Samantha Delaney
Samantha Delaney
New Business Development Manager at Harcourts Mandurah | (08) 9581 9999 | [email protected]

Samantha Delaney is the New Business Development Manager at Harcourts Mandurah. Samantha joined the Harcourts Mandurah's property management team in 2012 as a property manager before moving into the New Business Development Manager role in 2018. She holds an Accreditation in Property Management from Harcourts Real Estate and a Property Manager licence from the WA Government. Samantha moved to Western Australia from the United Kingdom after many years working within the customer service industry.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Hi I’m renting privately and the landlord hasn’t fixed anything I’ve told him about or even looked at them. Like the air conditioner hasn’t worked for 2yrs now. And the lounge room and hallway leak water every time it rains. It runs down the walls and you find puddles of water all the time and the roof is bowing from the water in roof. And he is dumping the sewage on the lawn when it is full. It doesn’t matter if our kid’s are playing out there or if we are having a BBQ he will still do it. What can we do to get something done about it.

  2. Hi, I too am having problems getting any maintenance done, but mine are repairs that were listed to be done when I moved in, damage from the tenants before me. Like one is not a big job but All the fly screens are ripped and torn from previous tenants dogs , but all summer I had to keep my doors closed because of the flies getting through the screens. I have already replaced the worn out drapes that you could see through they were so old, I was told on viewing that they would be done when i moved in, never happened, there is also a big list . What can I do ?

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