I’m not going to post here things that you can quickly search on the internet – ie “a tenant needs to be given a breach notice if they are over 14 days late in paying the rent”, they then need to be followed up with an order for vacant possession if the breach has not been remedied.
All good but a bit boring and I find that most people can benefit more from real life experiences that happen within a property management agency.
Today I attended a tribunal hearing, breach notice was sent with a 7 day notice to remedy arrears which were about 14 days at the time.
Arrears were partly remedied. That is the tenant who was paying $450 per week put themselves on a payment plan and started to make $1000 per fortnight payments.
We pushed on with tribunal order because it was not remedied in full?
Why would we do this despite the tenant making a reasonable effort to remedy the arrears?
Because every property should be managed as if there is going to be an insurance claim at some point, if an insurance assessor had picked up that arrears had occured at some point – where was our tribunal order for a payment plan?
If they tenant decides to stop the payment plan of $1000 per week, then what recourse do we have to re-enforce it.
The tenant has made a few constant $1000 payments since falling in arrears and today at the hearing they were exactly $150 in arrears. Not much I know, but we do have a payment plan enforced by tribunal order now and no ambiguity in this file.
This case highlights the importance of ensuring that all arrears are handled precisely following a system and not using judgement in property management – ie they will be OK since they only fell behind a little bit and they are catching up. Taking short cuts in property management can get you in trouble later, ensure a precise system is adhered to.
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