Original post, now with updates for those curious about how things went when the owners of our long term lease tried to coerce us into staging, hosting and paying for their aggressive sales campaign to sell the property in one month, whilst gaslighting themselves that they were doing it to protect us.

Spoiler alert: the house hasn’t sold.

***UPDATES BELOW ***

original post:

A whole month of showing house to investors

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/shitrentals/s/sopSWOZQ5o

A whole month of showing house to “investors”

We were sent the notice of intention to sell last week and received this cheerful note from the selling agents.

We have six months left on our lease and are emphasising that they don’t want us to leave. They want to sell it with us in it, as a “tenanted investment” and also want us to prepare the house with a “minimalist” look to present for a photography session. They are “locking in” dates and times for inspections and auction, but are also insisting on a lockbox. They don’t mention the other myriad requests that come from buyers doing due diligence.

We’ve already had weeks of entertaining tradespeople coming to quote and fix the ceiling that finally fell in, and the neighbours fencing upgrade this past year. So much for “quiet enjoyment.”

It is inhumane to cause this amount of disruption to anyone’s home and family, especially given how much we pay now to have a roof over our heads. It’s going to take a lot out of me to cope with the disruptions and violation of my space and privacy while random strangers traipse through the house and poke around my stuff when we are not there. I know that this is the way things are done, but the stress of all of this is probably going to put me in hospital.

—

** UPDATE: 3 months later…

**TL;DR

I am happily settled into my new rental home, enjoying the sunshine this Melbourne morning from the lovely garden of my new rental home. The previous house remains on the market.

***Thanks for all the responses. For those going through similar or otherwise interested in how this situation played out, here’s a meaty update for you to snack on.***

***Also, the “TWILIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY SESSION” was the worst!! It’s an upsell product to get more $ for the agency. The agent and the kid with a mid-range digital camera and basic lenses (clearly not a professional photographer) showed up before 7 and took over 3 hours to do it, needed our help for everything, moved stuff around, asked us to move things, including our cars and caravan out of the driveway and carport bays, opened up all the windows and blinds and didn’t close them when they left, after 9 pm. Also used an app to draw a digital “floor plan” of the house. The results are terrible and not nearly as nice as the photos they already had of the place or the photos I offered them that I had taken before. I agreed to the evening session once they gave me what I needed, but under normal circumstances, ***would probably refuse this in the future.

•PUSHBACK**: As they had given only the bare minimum required 14-day notice, I asked via REA for an additional 2-3 weeks to organise myself to comply, and to bring in some support to physically accomplish the things, organise pet sitting, etc. (I’d recently had surgery and had limited mobility and lots of follow up appointments every week.) I said I was willing to cooperate with their sales plan, but simply could not physically accomplish it in that short a timeframe. REA said it sounded reasonable and took it to the owner. Owner flat out refused and insisted that the sales plan would proceed as written.

• I emailed back, that it was unfortunate and a frankly disappointing lack of flexibility — that it did not change my position that we are “simply unable to comply with the proposed schedule as written on such l short notice.”

Agent replied with a professional-sounding, firmly worded and slightly misleading email reminding me that the owner is within their rights blah blah blah and the agency was fully compliant in their requests and notice given, so, paraphrasing… you have no choice but to comply. Please make sure the house is ready for our agents, building inspector and photographer on Monday.

• BREACH NOTICES AND REFUSAL OF ENTRY

I drew up breach notices (and a VCAT application ready to lodge) on the basis that

1.) owner has to make reasonable attempts to come to an agreement on times of entry,

2.) their insistence on entry outside of hours and

3.) contesting that proper notice had been followed - that the email was clearly a follow-up to a phone call and a summary of what was being “proposed,” and was not formal notice of entry.

I served the breaches, and informed them that I would be refusing entry for their “twilight photography session.”

As remedy, I requested that they allow and instruct their sales agents to speak with me directly about the sales plan, as they would likely be able to allay many of my concerns around privacy and safety as a matter of course as they would normally do - saying that their flat refusal of my request basically tied their agents’ hands so they could not communicate with me in a normal way to make this as cooperative and less invasive process.

*(The breach notices were a shot across the bow, and my VCAT application would have tied them up for 11-13 weeks,according to the current timeframe given on the VCAT website for non-urgent cases, instead of the measly 3 weeks’ grace period I was asking them for. I could have easily drawn that out, but by this time I really wanted to leave.* ****I also started paying rent weekly until I gave my vacate notice*** - always careful to remain paid at exactly 14 days so it was never in arrears- instead of paying the full month up front as we had been doing like clockwork per our lease agreement, disrupting the cashflow we had so dependably supplied for years, always a two days before the due date. )

• **They caved immediately**, and gave me the three additional weeks I’d originally asked for (now only two.) Their sales agent called me, and walked me through the process in a much more professional and respectful way, and was able to tell me what they could do to support my privacy. The accommodations he offered were to use AI to remove any personal belongings visible, agreed to give me advance notice on the day the signage arrived to be put up in front of the house, and didn’t insist on the lockbox (as we now had direct contact and was willing to be present for the dates and times listed, and I agreed to give him a set of keys to be kept securely at the office -not on the premises-once the house was packed up.)

The sales agent was an older gentleman, quite professional and pleasant to deal with. He also spoke openly that he prefers to stage and sell an empty home, to the tune of tens of thousands. ***He was confident the house would sell, occupied or not, in a month, and said the owners were insistent that they wanted to protect their tenants.*** I called bullpoo, and said that if they had genuinely wanted to protect our tenancy they would have offered us another long term lease to sign before selling, not wait til our lease was almost up and force us into an uncomfortable corner. So yeah, they just wanted us to keep funding their mortgage through the process… which we would have been open to doing that for longer, had they been less disingenuous about it and treated us with a little more respect and humanity.

• It took me a little longer to find a new place than hoped (yes the rental market is as bad as everyone says) so my partner was present for the first raft of open homes… which were very poorly or not attended at all, and the ones that did attend were a random mix of sticky-beaks, families, young couples, and people known by the agency to attend lots of inspections but not serious buyers. Only one investor-type showed up and asked som questions, but didn’t come back.

• Moving house is always stressful, but not compared to having your home invaded on the regular whilst you’re trying to live there. The property manager gave us a good reference and we didn’t have any problems from them at all… which I was pleased about as she was definitely one of the better ones, we had built a good relationship over the years and we understood she was just doing her job in representing the owner’s position. Besides, we are actually good tenants. She was professional throughout and the best one I’ve ever dealt with.

**I am happily settled into my new rental home, enjoying the sunshine this Melbourne morning from the lovely garden of my new rental home. The previous house remains on the market.**