It seems everyone and their mum has a horror story involving either mould, wild rent increases, damaged properties or an evil landlord (or any number of combinations of these), so it’s no surprise renters are looking for ways to strike back. But with no bargaining power at all in this cursed rental market, what can we do? Turns out, there are still some sneaky renter hacks you can try.
Greens Councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan from Queensland shared a genius hack for vacating renters whose landlords plan to bring prospective tenants to view the property.
“If you’re moving out of a rental and your landlord/agent is showing the property to new prospective tenants, consider leaving some notes or posters like this in a few prominent locations around the home,” he suggested in a Facebook post.
He shared a picture of a note tacked to a wall which read “Notes to self”, followed by a series of warnings.
“HAZARD: reoccurring mould in main bathroom — ceiling covered,” one note read.
“House has excessive dust from construction site and train,” said another.
One of the notes also warned of “rats”, while another warned there had been mould in the main room for more than a year.
The papers also said the previous rent increase for the property was $75 a week and that it had been non-negotiable.
Councillor Sriranganathan said that “legally, an agent or landlord shouldn’t be touching or interfering” with the notes, the same way they wouldn’t move anything else around in your place.
“A landlord’s right to enter a property to show it to prospective tenants does not give them any rights to interfere with the tenants’ property,” he went on to explain.
“It’s a pretty straightforward legal position and widely accepted that when you rent a property from someone, your landlord doesn’t have the right to come into your house and move stuff around.
“Too often, landlords and agents fail to disclose serious property maintenance and amenity issues when a lease is signed so they can trick tenants into paying more rent than a place is worth.
“I think it’s great when outgoing tenants can inform future renters of property defects so they know the issues before they sign the contract. Perhaps there should even be a publicly accessible register where tenants can list maintenance issues that haven’t been rectified in order to hold property managers accountable.”
Personally, I think this renter hack is brilliant.
Given we do not have a Yelp or Glassdoor for landlords, and that one guy who asked his landlord to provide a reference from a previous tenant was promptly rejected, renters are not only open to exploitation but we often can’t even warn each other.
Even though we have to provide references for ourselves when we apply to properties.
The power imbalance is real, and this is a great and completely harmless way to challenge it — all you have to do is leave a list of repairs, issues or damages that need to be fixed on a note that can be easily read by others.
Some geriatric bootlickers were not impressed and took to the comments of Councillor Sriranganathan’s FB post to accuse him of encouraging renters to “sabotage” landlords and “act maliciously”.
FYI, it’s not sabotage if the property legitimately has these faults which are being concealed. It’s just telling the truth.
Would anyone say the same if someone was trying to sell you a very expensive yet faulty or damaged product? I fkn doubt it.
Anyway, I’m going to tuck this little renter hack into my back pocket for the next time I have to deal with a move. Which, in these unstable times, will probably be imminent.
