Outgoing Inspections - should tenant be allowed?

The law currently REQUIRES the tenant to be allowed to attend the outgoing inspection after vacating.  Landlord's claims for compensation at the tribunal can be rejected if the tenants can show they weren't invited to be present.  However there is growing concern about this, as the following extract from Residential Property News explains:

Following last week’s violent outburst from a tenant who sent his property manager to hospital, many in the industry are calling for tenants to be banned from the final inspection.

Yesterday, Residential Property Manager reported on a Western Australian property manager who was attacked during an outgoing inspection.

Property managers from around the country expressed their sympathy for the property manager and their anger that she was placed in such a risky situation.

Speaking with Residential Property Manager, industry veteran Julie Smart from First National Real Estate Townsville said she fought the legislation when it first came into her state of Queensland.

“I started working in real estate in 1984, so when they brought this legislation in I was very vocal about it because I knew it would put a lot of property managers in risky situations.

“If a tenant is going to get aggressive it’s going to be during the vacate,” she said.

According to Ms Smart, property managers are generally young females who are already at a greater risk of being assaulted.

Binzi the Delta Therapy dog

Visitors to the Ray White Beecroft office will often have seen our little brown dog Binzi, who sometimes sleeps in the back of the office.  Here she is recovering from collecting the mail.

Binzi is an accredited Delta Therapy dog and visits local hospitals including Beecroft Nursing Home.  She must be the friendliest dog in the area and manages to keep us relaxed when the workload gets tense!

The case for Landlord Protection Insurance

A Perth rental property that was used as an illegal drug laboratory by the former tenants has racked up over $40,000 worth of damage.

In the first week of January this year, Perth police blitzed known drug labs across the city.  The two-bedroom home rented for more than $800 a week, was located in the leafy and sought-after inner-city suburb of Coolbinia.

The UK-based landlord, who found out the news from a media report, was fortunately covered by her landlord insurance.

“The owner sent us a link to a news story online about police at a lab and said the property belonged to her,” general manager of EBM Insurance Brokers RentCover division Sharon Fox-Slater said. “Fortunately, this landlord was insured with us, as many landlord insurers don’t cover costs related to clandestine laboratory forensic clean-ups. In this case, the forensic clean-up part of the claim was more than $25,000. That didn’t include the cost of replacing a benchtop used in ‘cooking’ drugs and a dishwasher where contaminated utensils had been washed.”

In addition to damage and clean-up costs, RentCover also covered lost rent costs.

DA in Beecroft Shopping Village

HSC has published information on DA 448/2014 for alterations to 1 - 3 Wongala Crescent Beecroft.

Beecroft House Sold Moments after Auction

About 55 people attended the auction last Saturday, but nobody opened the biding!  The auctioneer made a bid on behalf of the vendor, $1,050,000, but still none of the six registered bidders raised their bidding cards.  So the auctioneer passed the property in.  People started filing out, but some noticed Douglas Macarthur leading a young couple toward the house, and not long after a "SOLD" sign appeared on the board outside the house!
Some people don't realise that bidding for a property can continue until midnight under auction rules, and this couple took advantage of this to enter a private bid that the owner accepted.  Everyone was happy, except for some disappointed would-be buyers who later asked what had happened.  Doug's response was, "You had your chance, you should have bid at the auction, or come to see me afterwards.  Now the deal is done, sorry."

Underquoting law change in Queensland

New laws have been passed in Queensland.  The main changes include:

• Removing the use of price guides at auction
• Removing the requirement for agents to disclose commission arrangements with a buyer
• Extending the statutory limit on lengths of appointments for a sole or exclusive agency from 60 days to 90 days
• Deregulating the maximum commissions rates to allow contractual freedom 
• Abolishment of a separate Warning Statement. Instead this will be included in the relevant contract
• Stricter disclosure of third-party benefits to buyers

Can't buy, can't rent

A good article in the Daily Telegraph reports:
An influx of investors dominating the market has trapped young Sydneysiders in an unusual predicament - unable either to buy or rent a property.
Normally many buyers are renters moving into home ownership, leaving a vacant property available.  But increasingly buyers are investors, who put their properties on the market at a rental reflecting the need to recover their investment.
House prices have gone up dramatically, but the normal increase in rental property from investors buying houses has not resulted.
REINSW statistics show vacancy rates are down to 1.4% in March, the lowest since November 2011.

Cyber Theft due to Facebook and Emails

Real estate agencies have been urged to consider a zero tolerance policy to Facebook and internet-based email accounts after cyber criminals targeted an office in Western Australia.

WA Consumer Protection has confirmed the hackers stole $50,000 from a Broome real estate agency after they hacked into the company’s online banking system in February.  

Mandy Reed, general manager at Hutchinson Real Estate, told Real Estate Business the cyber fraudsters most likely accessed the company bank account after a compromised email allowed malicious software (or malware) to be installed.

"We got done alright,” said Ms Reed. “We were doing a reconciliation of one of our bank accounts when we realised the money that was supposed to come into it never arrived. So we looked into it because it came from a trust account. We rang the bank and found out it had been directed to a bank account in western Sydney.".

Security experts advise “Staff should be trained to ensure that suspicious emails are deleted immediately, attachments are never opened and links never activated. Having up-to-date anti-virus and anti-malware software is essential for any business. Real estate and settlement agents should manually input bank account details of clients when making electronic bank payments, rather than relying on the accuracy of details in pre-entered lists.”

Underquoting debate continues

Tom Panos, real estate coach and head of real estate sales at News Corp, is in favour of agents giving price guides.  "Buyers will be turned off looking at things and not knowing whether they can afford it or not. They would stay away from properties where they were given no idea at all of the selling price. So, I think it would be against the vendor's best interests,” he said.
This misses the key point, that buyers are turned off when they see houses they thought they could afford being auctioned at prices way above the guide price.  And by then the buyer has spent hundreds of dollars on inspection fees.
Tom goes on to say "The legislation states that it’s illegal to underquote, so the solution is very simple - punish those who are doing it”.  But as we found when we complained in 2011, the OFT won't act if the vendor and agent agree on the price guide to be advertised.
We believe the key is to have compulsory display of comparables, so buyers and OFT inspectors can see for themselves whether the guide price is justifiable or blatant deception.