u/discutablemaisbrave

Hey everyone, looking for advice on if you think we can get out of our rental agreement without penalty (or without too much penalty at least)

12m lease began 27/2/26
For context, owner bought the property just prior to us moving in, so I feel as though he’s been blindsided by some of these issues (shower in particular I think was covered up by previous owner to avoid fixing before selling)
House was in pretty bad shape and dirt w but we didn’t move in immediately, reported some issues in condition report such as broken blinds, sliding windows in bad shape and without proper locks, water damaged kitchen cabinets.
Finally moved in, noticed more issues, sent a request for maintenance on 14/4, big ticket issue was the shower floor had a massive crack, meaning the floor is uneven, water pools in the lower side (drain on higher side) etc. After looking at the condition report photos, the crack was actually present however it was less noticeable as the shower floor had been painted (to date, maybe 50% of said paint remains, it started peeling immediately). Also reported dripping from toilet tap and washing machine hot tap.
Was having issues with bond lodgement (they didn’t lodge until 24/3 and kept getting my husbands name wrong) and sent a text following up on 15/4, receive a reply that the owner had changed agencies.
Received an email 15/4 from new agency with an app to submit maintenance requests, submitted above issues.
Bathroom exhaust also stopped working and submitted a request for that.
Have had maybe 10+ varying trades people come to quote, plumbers advised that the shower has definitely leaked water to under the shower/tiles etc. and also that the crack is definitely pre-existing and was painted over lol. They’ve said that it will be 5+ days to fix and we will be without shower, possibly without the entire bathroom (there’s also a bath). Only issue rectified to date is the bathroom exhaust and I think that was maybe a fluke as an electrician came to quote and happened to have a replacement in his van.
6/5 I reported a roof leak, during rain noticed a loud drip sound in ceiling and the plaster sagging, also discolouring.

Now if it was maintenance issues alone we wouldn’t be in as much of a rush to get out (even though it’s frustrating and the house is so cold and we are dreading winter with a baby in here)
The other issue is our neighbour… or at least her visitors.
We are a series of 3 units, and we live in the middle. Our back neighbour’s door step is pretty much right next to our bedroom window (the glass is very thin) so we hear them arriving at all hours of the day, can hear everything said outside our window. She had an altercation with someone a couple weeks ago during the day which the police were called but they didn’t attend as the other party left. This weekend things escalated. To summarise ~36 hours, her fiancé was behaving erratically outside all of Friday night, called the ambulance to our house (we woke up to pounding on the door at 4am). We called police later as we heard a verbal altercation. Saturday he asked us several times (by standing outside our living room window and also knocking on our door) the whereabouts of our neighbour, also smoked weed outside our window. Saturday night behaved erratically, had a verbal altercation and smashed the front window of our neighbour. We called police and they ended up arresting him (we assume). We woke up this morning to papers under the door that there is an AVO on our neighbours behalf against him. Our neighbour has apologised to us, we don’t blame her though and we told her that.
Now hopefully he does abide by the AVO but as he is her fiancé we aren’t too confident that this is the last we will see him.
Living in the area we were prepared for some noise, our previous apartment building had to be evacuated due to a neighbour setting stuff on fire, we live in a society etc etc. We also have a 4 week old baby who I am home alone with for 9 hours a day, this man has engaged with our house and we know he is not afraid to smash a house window. Also it’s hard enough sleeping with a newborn and having all this happen outside the bedroom window doesn’t help!

I intend to email the PM and let them know what happened this weekend, while following up on maintenance. We are also looking into options for a security camera but I’m not sure what the rental friendly options are for that. To be honest the only thing that would make me feel a bit safer is if double glazed windows with locks were installed at least in the public facing windows, considering the dragging of feet with other maintenance though I highly doubt the landlord would agree to this.

Anyway if you read all of this help please!!
We really can’t afford to pay big penalties to break the lease but would really like to get out.