After four weeks of hell, in which I wasn't sure if I was going to have to move (again, only three short months after I'd last done so), it appears my communal living horror story has finally ended. And yes, the ending was a happy one. Thank fuck for that.
I've talked about my housing situation with a few people on here, notably Salome, who has her fair share of terrible stories to share. However, I haven't shared it in its entirety - merely a snippet here and there, which for people who actually are interested in that sort of thing, can be confusing. So here's my story of rental property hell, in its revolting entirety.
Four weeks ago today, my house got a phone call from the senior property manager of the real estate agency we go through, alerting us that we were 55 days behind in rent. If we do some math here, this is what that equals...
55 / 7 = Roughly 7.857. This is the number of weeks we were behind, calculated to make the rest of this easier.
7.857 * $450 (our total rent per week, split four ways) = $3535.65
In other words, my house was over $3500 behind in rent. That's some serious shit. But who wasn't paying? The day we got the phone call, I went through my important papers and found all my rent reciepts, put them in order, and came to the conclusion that I was totally up-to-date. Sam, my best friend and fellow Constance 6-string slinger, didn't even have to look for proof - his rent is paid two weeks in advance by automatic bank transfer, and seeing as he has a steady job and always has money in that account, he was in the clear. So, that left the other two guys in the house, who will remain nameless, because for some reason I feel the need to protect the guilty. I am losing my edge here...
Anyways, three of the four members of the household went down to the real estate agency the day we got the phone call to at once get more info on the situation and show we give a shit about staying in our house. We were presented with a rent ledger, showing us amounts paid, when they were paid, but one important detail was missing - the ledgers they use don't keep names of the person that paid. Sam was able to easily identify his payments due to the fact that they are all of equal amount and arrive like clockwork at equal intervals. Since I had spent some time before this re-acquainting myself with the details on my rent reciepts, I was able to check off my payments. The third person, instead of checking any details, simply checked off everything else on the page and claimed all the payments as his own, leaving him only one month behind, or $450. At was around this time that the fourth member of our household arrived at the office, and knowing he was at least part of the reason we were so behind, he paid up a pretty big amount that day, and didn't look at the rent ledger. So we finished up, went home, and thus began the period where we didn't know what the fuck we were going to do.
One of our tenants/friends (the one that wasn't at the meeting at the office) had, at around this point, decided to accept all the debt as his own and try to get either a personal loan or a credit card to pay it off, which would financially cripple him for quite a long time, but at least then it was his problem and not ours, and we would be free to stay in our house. The only problem was that nobody was accepting him for either. Finally, he was able to get a loan through a major bank over here in Australia, with his father as a guarantor, however that fell through as well when the bank came to the conclusion that the loan didn't benefit both our friend and the guarantor, which makes no sense, but that's the explanation they gave.
The other tenant, on the other hand, was and still is an interesting case. Sam decided to do some detective work to accurately divide the debt into two parts for the people who were responsible for it, and came to a startling conclusion - our housemate couldn't have been only one month behind. Looking at records, he found that he was closer to two months behind with his payments, or $900. While this still meant that the tenant seeking all the loans, etc, was still more behind than the other, our tenant was pretty much going to let the other housemate, his best friend, get a loan to pay for debt that wasn't his and pay interest on that debt. I am well aware that I am living with an absolute scumbag with a complete lack of a conscience or morality.
For four weeks, we lived on borrowed time while our friend struggled to get a loan. The breach notice arrived in the mail, and from there we were just waiting for the eviction notice to follow close behind. Thanfully, it didn't, and now that we have resolved the problem, it never will. How did we fix it, you may ask? This story ain't over yet...
Two days ago, our friend got a call from his father, the previous guarantor on the loan that fell through, and he told him that he'd just sold two properties and now had the money to help our friend out. The amount due (which was over $3,900, so once again some assholes weren't paying their rent, even when we were on the thinnest ice imagineable) was wired to the real estate office yesterday, went in their account today, and yesterday, when I went into the office to check if everything had worked according to plan, I paid my rent, and I am now two weeks ahead. And they all lived happily ever after, or at least I hope we do.
What's the moral of this story? Don't live with assholes that don't pay their rent. I moved into this house to take a break off my studies and look at life from a different angle. I don't regret making that decision, but I do regret not knowing more about the other tenants I was moving in with. Now that everything is resolved, it's great, but having almost been kicked out of your house when you pay rent regularly sucks, and I don't think anyone can contest that.
[EDIT: I just got another juicy detail from one of my housemates - the money transfer went through on the day the real estate agency was set to mail out our eviction notice. Goddamn.]
I've talked about my housing situation with a few people on here, notably Salome, who has her fair share of terrible stories to share. However, I haven't shared it in its entirety - merely a snippet here and there, which for people who actually are interested in that sort of thing, can be confusing. So here's my story of rental property hell, in its revolting entirety.
Four weeks ago today, my house got a phone call from the senior property manager of the real estate agency we go through, alerting us that we were 55 days behind in rent. If we do some math here, this is what that equals...
55 / 7 = Roughly 7.857. This is the number of weeks we were behind, calculated to make the rest of this easier.
7.857 * $450 (our total rent per week, split four ways) = $3535.65
In other words, my house was over $3500 behind in rent. That's some serious shit. But who wasn't paying? The day we got the phone call, I went through my important papers and found all my rent reciepts, put them in order, and came to the conclusion that I was totally up-to-date. Sam, my best friend and fellow Constance 6-string slinger, didn't even have to look for proof - his rent is paid two weeks in advance by automatic bank transfer, and seeing as he has a steady job and always has money in that account, he was in the clear. So, that left the other two guys in the house, who will remain nameless, because for some reason I feel the need to protect the guilty. I am losing my edge here...
Anyways, three of the four members of the household went down to the real estate agency the day we got the phone call to at once get more info on the situation and show we give a shit about staying in our house. We were presented with a rent ledger, showing us amounts paid, when they were paid, but one important detail was missing - the ledgers they use don't keep names of the person that paid. Sam was able to easily identify his payments due to the fact that they are all of equal amount and arrive like clockwork at equal intervals. Since I had spent some time before this re-acquainting myself with the details on my rent reciepts, I was able to check off my payments. The third person, instead of checking any details, simply checked off everything else on the page and claimed all the payments as his own, leaving him only one month behind, or $450. At was around this time that the fourth member of our household arrived at the office, and knowing he was at least part of the reason we were so behind, he paid up a pretty big amount that day, and didn't look at the rent ledger. So we finished up, went home, and thus began the period where we didn't know what the fuck we were going to do.
One of our tenants/friends (the one that wasn't at the meeting at the office) had, at around this point, decided to accept all the debt as his own and try to get either a personal loan or a credit card to pay it off, which would financially cripple him for quite a long time, but at least then it was his problem and not ours, and we would be free to stay in our house. The only problem was that nobody was accepting him for either. Finally, he was able to get a loan through a major bank over here in Australia, with his father as a guarantor, however that fell through as well when the bank came to the conclusion that the loan didn't benefit both our friend and the guarantor, which makes no sense, but that's the explanation they gave.
The other tenant, on the other hand, was and still is an interesting case. Sam decided to do some detective work to accurately divide the debt into two parts for the people who were responsible for it, and came to a startling conclusion - our housemate couldn't have been only one month behind. Looking at records, he found that he was closer to two months behind with his payments, or $900. While this still meant that the tenant seeking all the loans, etc, was still more behind than the other, our tenant was pretty much going to let the other housemate, his best friend, get a loan to pay for debt that wasn't his and pay interest on that debt. I am well aware that I am living with an absolute scumbag with a complete lack of a conscience or morality.
For four weeks, we lived on borrowed time while our friend struggled to get a loan. The breach notice arrived in the mail, and from there we were just waiting for the eviction notice to follow close behind. Thanfully, it didn't, and now that we have resolved the problem, it never will. How did we fix it, you may ask? This story ain't over yet...
Two days ago, our friend got a call from his father, the previous guarantor on the loan that fell through, and he told him that he'd just sold two properties and now had the money to help our friend out. The amount due (which was over $3,900, so once again some assholes weren't paying their rent, even when we were on the thinnest ice imagineable) was wired to the real estate office yesterday, went in their account today, and yesterday, when I went into the office to check if everything had worked according to plan, I paid my rent, and I am now two weeks ahead. And they all lived happily ever after, or at least I hope we do.
What's the moral of this story? Don't live with assholes that don't pay their rent. I moved into this house to take a break off my studies and look at life from a different angle. I don't regret making that decision, but I do regret not knowing more about the other tenants I was moving in with. Now that everything is resolved, it's great, but having almost been kicked out of your house when you pay rent regularly sucks, and I don't think anyone can contest that.
[EDIT: I just got another juicy detail from one of my housemates - the money transfer went through on the day the real estate agency was set to mail out our eviction notice. Goddamn.]
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What a fucking headache! The possibility that you could be homeless shortly is so stressful. Happened to me a few months ago when I got back from o/s. Taking 2wks off work when you don't get holiday pay + having no savings = having no money to pay the 2wks worth of bills that have piled up back here in Australia. Luckily I have good mates who lent me enough cash to put me back in the clear.
Hope everything else has been going well for you...