Rental Disaster
We have all heard stories of the Landlord from hell or the tenant from hell, well here is one to add to the archives.I was recently referred a property in St. Albans, it was a 3 bedroom brick veneer home in a relatively quiet and unassuming street, your everyday suburban house. It had been purchased 12 months previously by a Vietnamese vendor who could not speak English. She subsequently rented the house to some young people without putting a lease in place. A cash arrangement. The property was not insured.
The first 2 months of the tenancy went by and were uneventful, but what happened after that was nothing short of a disaster!
The tenants decided that the property was better suited to the production of hydroponic marijuana. They dutifully set about transforming the house into a hothouse, this involved the bypassing of the electricity meter and taking power directly from the street. Installation of banks of transformers in the laundry. Covering all the walls and floors with heavy duty black plastic sheeting. Installation of additional ducted heating units which included drilling massive holes in the ceilings and bringing through flexible aluminium conduit pipes, to carry the hot air to the growing areas. Installation of heat lamps suspended from the ceilings by chains. But best of all a fully operational automatic internal sprinkler system! It was an elaborate affair indeed.
Neighbours became suspicious because the windows had been blacked out and people came and went at all times of the day, but strangely enough no one lived there!
One fateful night the Police Helicopter along with a dozen police cars raided the house and ripped out every plant some 200 full sized plants!
The vendor was left with a catastrophe! We advised the vendors’ solicitor of our findings and set about restoring the property back to something that resembled a suburban house again. By the time our gardeners, painters and maintenance people had finished the property was back to being ship shape!
From the time the vendor handed over the keys, we took total control.
We sold the property at auction one month later, the vendor being out of pocket over the exercise by $ 5000.00 that is what we call a lucky escape!
Bernard Lawry
Managing Director
ASPC Property Pty Ltd
posted by brett hayton @ 12:28 PM
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