Landlord claiming my whole deposit

[Stonemason]

Tenant's duty to power-wash outside walls, LOL gtfo go f yourself with your doublevelvet horse manure

My, but you are all bitter and twisted. What do you know about horse manure or double velvet paint? You probably do not have two cents to rub together and now you want to tell the adults how to manage their properties.

 

[Drifter]

What a mature response.

 

[RonSwanson]

Small claims court is your best option

This, or even the RHT is very biased against slumlords. Hit them where is hurts.

 

[richjdavies]

This, or even the RHT is very biased against slumlords. Hit them where is hurts.

And what if over R15000?

 

[zerocool2009]

And what if over R15000?

Yet a lawyer who can bite!

 

[RonSwanson]

And what if over R15000?

RHT should handle all cases.
I guess it would be less than .5% of cases though, Landlord is far more likely to be screwed over than a tenant.

 

[richjdavies]

RHT should handle all cases.
I guess it would be less than .5% of cases though, Landlord is far more likely to be screwed over than a tenant.

Yes... Thats been my situation. Like I said 480 days later, and we maybe have a court date... Maybe... Still no subpoena as promised...

 

[RonSwanson]

Yes... Thats been my situation. Like I said 480 days later, and we maybe have a court date... Maybe... Still no subpoena as promised...

I must have missed your story... link to the post?

 

[krycor]

I own an apartment I live in, in Cape Town and another I rent out in. I've also rented before I bought.
I've been both sides of the line, I find some of these "home owners" here to be ludicrous. The same type I had to rent from.

You have some kind of misguided idea that a house is a diamond that forever gives wealth.
Do you drive a car and expect it to last forever too?

Paint looks old after a few years. Argue all you want because you are blind or don't have any sense of style or taste but that is the reality.
Next up, things wear out and that is expected because a house is something that breaks down over time.

My GF works in the building industry. The life time of a domestic property is between 50-100 years. That is the reality. You can argue all you want but that is the point at which the pipes will need replacing, wires will have degraded, ground movement cracked and damaged parts of the building, etc. And that is just the structural parts. Most of you probably bought cheap properties too so you'll have plastic or galvanized pipe instead of copper and so on, so your building's life is even less. Geysers, paint, interior like taps, especially with a family, aren't rated for beyond 5 years many things less.

If you can't accept these facts, you need to sell your property and invest in something else.
Tangible assets have very limited lifetimes. Properties have longer lifetimes but it is still relatively limited. You don't get pure profit from it. If someone told you that, you were misled or don't understand investments

Good on the people here that went to court for being told to pay for paint.

Lastly the law clearly states you need to provide the tenant with your quotes and then provide them the opportunity to repair it themselves.
Do you guys bother to do that?
These are the typical landlord that argue when they need to fix things and then try keep the deposit after the fact.

I hire a company to take a full inventory, they take pictures of every millimeter and make a note of every single little ding.
Then we do the same when the person moves out.
But this idea that you do these half assed inventories then claims things after the fact is total BS.

I always find landlords to be morons mostly & especially when their view on property is not strictly investment and seen more as direct income.

So current property we moving out was a shithole but beggars can't be choosers.. the realtor and landlord promised painting(they didn't bother), cleaning of property carpets, cleaning of pool, fixing of extractor etc all vaporware.

So we did all the above and including fixing toilet that had o-ring replacement needed including bottom of inside being dark brown.. **** not brakish water. I **** u not.. the landlord's kids stayed here. So needless to say we expecting random claims on deposit but because we been round the bush many time we compiled interactions, photos and lawyer ready to go.

They now say they can only do inspection on the LAST day(kinda why i'm responding) but also that we not allowed to access the property after. Uhm I think they need to get ready and lube up as Housing Tribunal & Rental agency assoc love squashing license for non-complaint crap like that.. so yah another day in the hell hole country where people want to steal. (PS landlord is white.. my point is race matters little.. been attepted to screw over by white, indian, zulu etc all morons some even CEOs who don't understand how law works and that their dumb piece of paper cannot go over law in country). The more assute ones know that they can tell u to bugger off and have 6-9months before they need to lift a finger with free legal cases.. but when have money to screw people over with they settle more quickly.

We good tenants btw, we just get shitty landlords about 3/4 times.. next one seems on the ball thankfully. I've never needed to fix something after the fact other than replace a bulb which blew on inspection or explain what emergency lighting is(led bulb with battery.. baffles estate agents when they test wiring/switches and light stays lit when power tripped etc) but yah.

 

[fussydassie]

Back to the topic. So, is there an equivalent of blacklisting a landlord for not paying back deposits, not maintaining a place, not paying the right level of interest on deposit...
Or maybe a hello-Peter for landlords

There really should be

 

[competentblob]

don't understand how law works and that their dumb piece of paper cannot go over law in country).

As indicated in this thread, some people take the "lord" part of the their title quite seriously

 

[richjdavies]

There really should be

Shall we start one?

 

[Barbarian Conan]

My house in a scummy area valued at R1.5M would cost exactly the same to build as a house closer to the city which could easily be sold for triple the price. The location doesn't factor into how expensive it costs to build. The house in the fancier neighbourhood might even be cheaper to build because the distance to the industrial area is also a lot shorter, so the materials wouldn't have very far to be transported. So that argument doesn't hold much water.

Sure, cost of building houses is a factor, but it's far from the only one. Doesn't matter how cheap it is to build, if the city won't zone land as residential, you can't build.

House prices are inflated. Fact. Go and check historical house price growth vs CPI and wage growth and you'll see that property is inflated. And yeah, I agree, it is a political discussion. It's a complex subject, and I pointed out that the buy-to-let segment of the market is a contributing factor, rather than an alleviating factor as another poster suggested. But you're reading stuff into what I'm saying that is certainly not there.

There will always be people who have to/want to rent, no matter how cheap properties are. The buy to let crowd caters for that need. Judging by rental prices, I would say that we could use some more people buying to let, as there seems to be room for more people in that space.
Look at a property to buy, then look at a property to rent. You will see that the cost to buy isn't that much more expensive, and that it will probably be cheaper to pay a bond++ than the rent after 5 years.
The market regulates it quite well. Too many people buying to let, and the rental market will crash. Too few buy to let, and the rental market will become more lucrative, incentivizing buying to let.

Building a house in an expensive area IS more expensive than building it in a cheap area, unless you get the land for free. Buying the land, and potentially demolishing the existing building, is part of the cost.

You hit the nail on the head with the second paragraph. Blame government.
Zoning for residential, and making land and services available will do a lot to alleviate the "problem".

Short term rentals like AirBnB is of course a completely different discussion.

 

[zerocool2009]

There will always be people who have to/want to rent, no matter how cheap properties are. The buy to let crowd caters for that need. Judging by rental prices, I would say that we could use some more people buying to let, as there seems to be room for more people in that space.
Look at a property to buy, then look at a property to rent. You will see that the cost to buy isn't that much more expensive, and that it will probably be cheaper to pay a bond++ than the rent after 5 years.
The market regulates it quite well. Too many people buying to let, and the rental market will crash. Too few buy to let, and the rental market will become more lucrative, incentivizing buying to let.

Building a house in an expensive area IS more expensive than building it in a cheap area, unless you get the land for free. Buying the land, and potentially demolishing the existing building, is part of the cost.

You hit the nail on the head with the second paragraph. Blame government.
Zoning for residential, and making land and services available will do a lot to alleviate the "problem".

Short term rentals like AirBnB is of course a completely different discussion.

Great post. Wish interest rates would jump by 5%!

 

[Gnome]

Look at a property to buy, then look at a property to rent. You will see that the cost to buy isn't that much more expensive, and that it will probably be cheaper to pay a bond++ than the rent after 5 years.

Sadly in Cape Town this isn't true. Apartments here are like R3m+ and rent around R11k. So there is a huge price difference. That said you generally get better "landlords" here also.

But you do get the typical "landlord" that sees a property as a pure net-income proposition. They never dreamed that they would need to actually improve the place. The way they saw it was, "put down some money" (aka lend some money from a bank), then allow another person to stay there and that person will just take care of and pay for everything.

The model where people lend money to buy a second property for renting is completely broken, primarily because of this attitude. In a more perfect world people would buy property understanding that it is an asset with income possibility and not a pure income investment.

Overall property is a very low risk asset, and with low risk comes lower returns. As a landlord you have to realize the upkeep of the property is the costs you need to absorb because your asset is so low risk.

I've got some of shares and frankly they are far simpler to deal with than property. Not sure why these types of people don't just stick to that sort of thing. Guess it is a "have your cake and eat it too" kind of attitude.

 

[newby_investor]

Sadly in Cape Town this isn't true. Apartments here are like R3m+ and rent around R11k. So there is a huge price difference. That said you generally get better "landlords" here also.

Some property here in Cape Town, listed for those high prices, is struggling to sell at this point. Sellers have totally inflated expectations of what their property is worth. If you're renting for R11k, then the market value is really about R1.8M in my experience, maybe R2M if it's in really good condition.

 

[Gozado]

.. you do get the typical "landlord" that sees a property as a pure net-income proposition. They never dreamed that they would need to actually improve the place. The way they saw it was, "put down some money" (aka lend some money from a bank), then allow another person to stay there and that person will just take care of and pay for everything.

...
I've got some of shares and frankly they are far simpler to deal with than property. Not sure why these types of people don't just stick to that sort of thing. Guess it is a "have your cake and eat it too" kind of attitude.

In part, the reason such people buy property to rent out is exactly what you said: they dream that their only cost will be the bond repayment and the rates (and levies) and then that's it. Their having made no budget for ongoing maintenance and repairs generates a skewed calculation. They worsen the inaccuracy if they base their sums on the naive notion that there will always be 12 months' rental coming in per year. The disadvantage of this is that such landlords are under pressure to keep their outgoings unreasonably low, so they cannot cope with, or respond fairly to, a request from a tenant for something to be repaired. Similarly, this pressure is likely to drive them to neglect the checks, etc., on the next set of tenants, which will leave them more vulnerable to bad experiences with poorly-vetted tenants, and subsequently harden their hearts.

Another part, I believe, for some (and by no means all!) landlords is the glory, the status, the advancement they feel in the world, just to be able to say that they own property/properties, and that kind of ego-trip propels them into a willingness to push their tenants around. The disadvantage of this is that such landlords see their tenants as pawns in their personal territorial expansion.

Of course, there ARE good, reasonable landlords, who deal fairly and respectfully with their tenants, and keep proper records - and blessings be upon them!

 

[richjdavies]

So turns out the RHT is an bad as the landlords.

Got our court date, landlord said he would be out of the country, luckily they ignored that because there he was. (Just another attempt to continue to enrich himself with our money)

Somehow, inexplicably, they awarded him costs (which he never paid) to cut a hedge (despite it being maintained by a professional garden service every two weeks) and crazily 4 months rental increase that he "forgot to charge us" - despite emails showing he agreed to keep the rent the same.

The law is an ass... And tribunals are made up of the same idiots as the rest of government. Unfortunately even if everything is on your side - its still a coin flip, because their word is final unless you fancy going to the high court to get a real judge involved (not worth it for a few k, of course!). It genuinely felt like the chair didn't consider the fact that with no entry inspection and nothing brought up on exit inspection that the landlord could just make stuff up and that was okay?

For the scunmy landlords out there. Lesson is - dont pay back desposits... It will take the RHT 2 years to sit and you can earn good interest and only be made to be pay back 3% (and all along you can make up bogus stuff until the actual day of court and they will listen to and consider it).

I think I stand by my initial advice. Go in hard as you aint getting fair treatment. Possession is 9 tenths.

 

[RedViking]

So turns out the RHT is an bad as the landlords.

Got our court date, landlord said he would be out of the country, luckily they ignored that because there he was.

Somehow, inexplicably, they awarded him costs (which he never paid) to cut a hedge (despite it being maintained by a professional garden service every two weeks) and crazily 4 months rental increase that he "forgot to charge us" - despite emails showing he agreed to keep the rent the same.

The law is an ass... And tribunals are made up of the same idiots as the rest of government. Unfortunately even if everything is on your side - its still a coin flip, because their word is final unless you fancy going to the high court to get a real judge involved (not worth it for a few k, of course!)

The system is screwed up.

 

[TheMightyQuinn]

I always find landlords to be morons mostly & especially when their view on property is not strictly investment and seen more as direct income.

So current property we moving out was a shithole but beggars can't be choosers.. the realtor and landlord promised painting(they didn't bother), cleaning of property carpets, cleaning of pool, fixing of extractor etc all vaporware.

So we did all the above and including fixing toilet that had o-ring replacement needed including bottom of inside being dark brown.. **** not brakish water. I **** u not.. the landlord's kids stayed here. So needless to say we expecting random claims on deposit but because we been round the bush many time we compiled interactions, photos and lawyer ready to go.

They now say they can only do inspection on the LAST day(kinda why i'm responding) but also that we not allowed to access the property after. Uhm I think they need to get ready and lube up as Housing Tribunal & Rental agency assoc love squashing license for non-complaint crap like that.. so yah another day in the hell hole country where people want to steal. (PS landlord is white.. my point is race matters little.. been attepted to screw over by white, indian, zulu etc all morons some even CEOs who don't understand how law works and that their dumb piece of paper cannot go over law in country). The more assute ones know that they can tell u to bugger off and have 6-9months before they need to lift a finger with free legal cases.. but when have money to screw people over with they settle more quickly.

We good tenants btw, we just get shitty landlords about 3/4 times.. next one seems on the ball thankfully. I've never needed to fix something after the fact other than replace a bulb which blew on inspection or explain what emergency lighting is(led bulb with battery.. baffles estate agents when they test wiring/switches and light stays lit when power tripped etc) but yah.

First Highlight: Still feels compelled to mention it....
Second Highlight: 1 common denominator here and that's YOU...so you might THINK you're good tenants, but I doubt it.