Every time I want to give property managers the benefit of the doubt, another dodgy industry story surfaces. Case in point? This email where someone’s property manager slaps them with a thinly-veiled threat of homelessness.
A South Australian tenant posted an email screenshot into the increasingly popular tenant-driven Burn Book of the rental realm — AKA the ‘Don’t Rent Me’ Facebook group —showing an email from their property manager with the subject line ‘Do you need to call the removalist?’
If that threatening suggestion wasn’t bad enough, the email itself then read:
“Wow, it’s not looking good at all! So you are now five days in arrears! Let’s hope the landlord renews your lease!”
I say this as politely as I can: this real estate agency can shove their position of power and passive-aggressive exclamation points up their ignorant ass. Where the hell do they get off writing an email like that? Exploiting the little power tenants feel they have right now?
“Let’s just play with people’s lives and emotions like it’s a game. God forbid they are ever in a similar position,” one commenter wrote.
The tenant claimed to have previously contacted the real estate to organise a late payment — like, before receiving this shitty email.
“It’s just not right to send an email like this. [I’m a] bit gobsmacked, I organised to pay for this week,” they said. “Talk about a slap in the face.”
According to Tenants Union NSW, tenants need to be unpaid for at least 14 days before you can be served a non-payment termination notice.
According to me, there’s a little thing called empathy and human compassion that should surface during a cost-of-living crisis, and this property manager should be ashamed of themselves for making a tenant feel as though they’re going to be out on their ass soon.
Surely a: “Just letting you know you’re currently five days in arrears — could you advise when you will be able to reconcile your balance” would’ve done the job? We’re at the point where some people in this industry are just taking the piss and showing their true colours during a time of vulnerability for others. Tell me I’m wrong.
Full disclosure: I went viral this year for documenting the communication between my property manager and I in the lead-up to our tribunal hearing. That’s why I’m so heated writing this.
I believe the posts copped so many views because people can relate to feeling manipulated and gaslit by their property managers while in a position as nerve-wracking as Australia’s current rental crisis.
It will never not baffle me that the property managers and landlords abusing their positions of power (it’s not all of them, I know that) actually have pulsating hearts and human emotions like the tenants they’re belittling.
