A Melbourne renter who successfully broke her lease due to her share house’s overwhelming mould problem says a real estate agent “tried to cover the whole thing up” and had the property back on the market two weeks after she left.
Ebony Rehannon told Nine.com.au the share house was so chock-a-block with mould that she and her housemates all fell ill, with Rehannon eventually contracting a lung infection due to the infestation.
She says tradespeople came to the property twice to seal up mould-heavy areas, but when she and her housemates returned to the property after the Easter long weekend, they found the share house was overwhelmingly dank with fungus.
Rehannon showed images to her doctor, who recommended she and her housemates get the hell out, immediately.
Before she could, Rehannon stated a mould inspector was scheduled to roll through, but another tradesperson sent by the real estate agency arrived first to preemptively clean the mould. Rehannon states “I didn’t let him touch any of the mould,” and that she never saw a final copy of their inspector’s report.
Stunningly, she says her Ray White real estate agent initially sought a lease termination fee equating to six weeks’ worth of rent, before eventually relenting on the matter when Rehannon shared a timeline of her reports and a letter from her doc.
She states the story didn’t end there, as the property was back on the market a fortnight after her housemates scrammed out of there. Rehannon says one of her housemates attended the open house and disputed the agent’s claim the shower was out of order due to a faulty extraction fan.
“The exhaust fan had been working the whole time,” Rehannon said.
“So they had just tried to cover the whole thing up.”
A Ray White spokesperson told Nine.com.au that appropriate measures had been enacted after Rehannon moved out, and confirmed that a new tenant is now living in the property. It is not clear where the place actually is, but mould is hardly a suburb-specific problem in the frequently damp city.
The story forms part of a broader picture of the problems facing Australia‘s young renters, including the inherent instability of renting, the difficulty of keeping pets, and the reality that actual home ownership is becoming increasingly difficult.
