u/catmum1412

Hi,
I rent a 2bhk 80s block in Sydney with my husband. Rent is very cheap and we love the place. Been here 4 years. This is the first time any of this has happened.

Since the beginning of this year I’ve accommodated 7 separate inspections from 4 different groups of service providers. REA and strata included.

Whatever is booked by the REA is fine and they communicate well in advance but early this year a random guy knocked and said he’s here to check the smoke alarms. He was standing inside the doorway (fly screen open and one foot in the door) I told him i have no communication and I can’t leg him in because it was 7:30am on a weekday and i had to leave for work. While getting ready I could hear him going around the block, went around to all the other units and did their inspections. I rang my neighbour and he said It was for smoke alarms apparently. I told if he wants to do it quickly I’m happy to oblige as I’m late for work. He abused me further by saying that now I’m scared and worried because I found out that this is a mandatory inspected. chucked a tantrum and did it anyway.

7 weeks later another bloke shows up, 6:53am this time. Knocks away aggressively. I went out in a towel because i was in the shower. He said he is here to do an inspection. I said I’m sorry i have no communication and i cannot allow him inside. I was half naked and needed to leave for work. He said “no dramas love, I’ll put you down as access denied”.

Today, (few months later) another guy bangs on my door aggressively at 7:30am. I didn’t even open it.

I’ve written to the REA twice and she always apologises regarding the miscommunication and says she’s received no information about this and is sorry for the inconvenience.

But that doesn’t solve the problem of strange men rocking up to my house at fkn 7am on random weekdays and demanding access to check smoke alarms.

How many inspections in 1 year are reasonable? Strata and REA included.

EDIT:

The 7 inspections/ visits I’ve previously accommodated from Jan 2026- Oct 2026 were partly from REA and rest from strata:

1. routine rental inspection by prop manager x2
2. smoke alarm upgrade to new ones x 2 - our building is so old the young sparky couldn’t understand the wiring so they had to send someone a second time who also took 45 minutes to fix one alarm
3. The rail that holds the blinds had become lose and they had to reinstall it so that was a 5th visit
4. Strata inspections for concrete cancer and an old water pipe burst in someone’s garage so they visited a few times with tradies to fix both these issues.

These are all fine and are for everyone’s safety/ maintenance purposes but I don’t understand the random, unscheduled visits where they want to check my smoke alarms every 2 months and neither does my real estate agency. She’s as surprised as i am.

Hi guys,
I’m looking for a place where i can take my friends for a celebration. There’ll be 15 of us. Most of them fussy about food. I want the food to taste like more than just salt and pepper. Our group is of mixed ethnicity and we really want to have the option of all you can eat because the boys are big eaters.

We’ve tried a few places in the past and they were disappointing as hell. The star casino buffet was a total let down.

We can’t do Korean bbq type buffets because a lot of my friends have dietaries.

Has anyone got good recs for a bang for your buck buffet, price isn’t a concern, we can do $200 per person.

I moved to a new country for uni. Met this man online and fell in love with him. We dated for 4 years before secretly getting married. As if things between us aren’t rocky enough that his family adds fuel to the fire. They’ve made my life miserable.

My FIL (Roger) cheated on my MIL (Emily) with his employee and brought her to live in the family home many years ago. My MIL bit the bullet and continued living there with the mistress (Misty) because she is penniless and lazy without my FIL’s support. My FIL is a centimillionaire and a big landlord. Misty is 20 yrs younger and obv only with him for the money. She never liked me since day and has been making my life miserable by all means possible. A lot happened but without getting into details I’ll keep it as short as possible. But please know, I’ve shed tears and felt like running away at every step of this relationship. My husband isn’t perfect but my in laws are another nightmare altogether.

Before the wedding his family would call family meetings to discuss how my behaviour was not upto their liking. I’m a very headstrong independent and outgoing person, I’m a senior exec in petroleum whereas both my MIL and Misty are semi literate/ SAHM who are basically good for nothing. I’ve tried being nice to them on several occasions but the whole mistress and wife living together is so off putting that I can’t see past it and respect them or strike up a decent conversation. So I mostly keep quiet when I visit my in laws and speak only when spoken to. They accused me of not wanting to mix up with them. My husband took a stand for me but that just infuriated them further.

Fast forward to us deciding to get married. We had a simple civil ceremony where we signed the papers in the presence of 2 witnesses with my parents over video call. We never bothered to inform his parents that we got married because my husband hates them and I’m not a fan either.

Then came the time for our cultural ceremonies. The planning was going well until my parents put their foot down that the mistress and her illegitimate twins will not be in attendance. My family is extremely well known socially/ politically and the optics of my future FIL walking in with the wife and Misty and kids of dubious parentage would have undone generations of repute.

When my in laws found out they threw the biggest fit. My FIL was rude to my father over the phone several times, the mistress started picking cheap ass gifts and jewellery to gift to me as revenge and my good for nothing MIL just watched from the background. The mistress left no stone unturned to make my wedding the most miserable 2 weeks of my life. They went to the extent of hosting a ceremony where gifts are given to the bride and groom but they literally gave me nothing, not even a dollar while my husband got showered in thousands of dollars worth of gifts. It wasn’t about the gifts at all, my parents bought me everything I could have wanted and paid for a 2 week long celebration. But it was more about maintaining appearances in front of extended family. We somehow managed to get over this nightmare and return back to our normal lives.

Eventually in laws and i decided to bury the hatchet and move on. Through the first year we co hosted many holiday parties and other events. We were all having a good time until the mistress declared that she wants to host our first anniversary party. We agreed and decided to invite all our friends since none of them could attend our destination wedding. Everything was going well until 1 week before the party when she randomly called and said that she cannot host the party anymore because her staff took time off abruptly. My husband and i decided to hire staff and caterers from our own pocket to continue hosting because it would have been embarrassing to cancel the party at such short notice. She threw a fit again and created such a rift that we just decided to host only our friends at a restaurant. We didn’t invite my in laws or any of their two bit relatives and honestly, had the best time.

Exactly one week after our anniversary is the mistress’s kids birthday. She decided to host a grand birthday party for them at home( yes, after cancelling our party). My husband and i were pissed but we still attended to keep up appearances. All his extended family was in attendance (we had to cancel on them last minute for our party) and i got so sick of explaining to these people why we had to cancel our party but we are hosting another one exactly one week after. Anyway I didn’t eat anything and was looking forward to leaving but then the cake was cut and they asked me to come and stand next to the kids and the mistress to pose for family pictures. I lost it, and walked out. In front of everyone. I could not pretend to be a part of this fake happy family anymore just for the sake of it. That was the last time i saw them. It has been radio silence from their end ever since.

I speak of these people with disdain because Roger pretends to be very high and mighty and successful whilst doing the most unthinkable thing of housing Emily and that concubine under the same roof. They even have illegitimate kids born out of wedlock. If Roger was so in love with this woman he should have divorced Emily and respectfully married the other one. Instead he subjected both women and his kids to this adultery and ruined everyone’s lives. The mistress decided to secure her financial future by having kids with him. Every relative and family friend laughs at this living arrangement and mocks this level of family drama. The embarrassment cannot be expressed in words.

The mistress has always wanted FIL and all his money to herself. First she drove away my SIL who now battles depression and lives in a different state. Then she tried to create issues between me and husband but we saw right through her. She has however successfully driven a wedge between us and his biological parents. FIL only cares about getting laid because he played her back by never actually divorcing his wife. My MIL doesn’t give a fuck about her kids and is just living her life. If it wasn’t the constant complaints from them then it was abusing my father over the phone or trying to humiliate me infront of the relatives on many occasions. She’s always upto some shit. My husband thinks she’s just jealous because she comes from an impoverished background, isn’t that educated, isn’t that good looking either; which is why she decided to have an affair with a rich old married man. She’s never had a proper husband and a legitimate relationship of respect and social acceptance.

My husband has been working in the family businesses since he was 14. He has supported his father through thick and thin, sometimes we go months without seeing a pay check from him because of finances tied up in huge projects. I have a great job so we live comfortably but my husband gets treated like a donkey. He works the longest hours and is always getting pushed around by his greedy father who refuses to pay actual employees to do the real work. The mistress manages finances and pays employees so we refuse to believe that they don’t have enough money to pay their own son but they can take vacations on cruise ships and put fuel in their bentleys and maybachs for grocery runs and swim class for her little shits.

So, AITA for cutting off in laws who do not give a shit about their first born son’s happiness and treat us like crap?