u/readthebananabritta

Hi reddit, my partner and I are breaking our lease about 3 months early as we finally managed to buy a property.

As usual, the REA is trying to charge upfront fees which from my research is not what's correct under residential law.

We said we want to try to find new tenants and do a lease transfer before she advertises the property. She said ok but that will still be treated as a break the lease and owner needs to approve new tenant. That doesn't make sense?

She's also wanting to charge full fees and not pro-rata, and wants it upfront before they even advertise.

Just looking for advice here. Thanks

If you guys have seen my previous post, I've been in war with my previous landlord since December when we broke the lease and moved out.

After applying to VCAt to dispute my bond and ask for $6500 on top of that, he didn't reply to any communication from Anika legal, they had sent a formal letter to refute every claim in his application.

I had to apply for a hearings order to dismiss his application because he hadnt paid the fee either. VCAT gave him 7 days to engage with mediator, and this old fart waited until 9pm of the last day to reply with a claim letter/ justification, invoices, etc.

The email from REA after exit inspection (that they didn't invite us to attend) had 3 items, a broken garage roller door, 2 patches on the floorboard and a broken toilet cistern. She even said in the email "thank you for leaving the house in a clean condition".

Now his claim and evidence include many more items, claiming the kitchen cupboards were greasy, invoice for carpet cleaning, broken light switch and an invoice of $985 to repaint the ceiling because of a command strip we left behind (we had already moved the ladder to the new place and on the day of cleaning we couldn't reach the ceiling). So during our stupid RDRV mediation session when he brought up these strips for the first time, my partner said you literally just pull the strip and it comes out, and asked if he wanted him to go back and do it. Landlord said it took the tradie over 30 min of scrubbing.

The same ceiling that has the strip has massive water marks that are his own fault. We had a water leak from a light fixture on the public holiday of 26 sep, texted the owner he said it's no big deal and he was sending a roofer, that came 6 days later to look at the roof, then 7 days after that to fix the roof. He never sent a plumber or electrician. During mediation I asked him why he never sent them but sent a roofer instead, he said he knew the problem was on the roof. I was like how can you know are you qualified? And he insisted it was a roof problem.

One of the quotes he uploaded as evidence is from a place I can't look up and when I check ABN it has a different name, which is suss. There are 2 numbers there, but looks like a typo. Called the number from the logo and doesn't exist, the number written below rings but nobody has answered when we tried calling (not from our number btw). Next step I might email them and see if they reply.

About the invoice for the wall painting, I refuse to believe any tradie would be incompetent enough to scrub a 3m strip and repaint the ceiling for that, charging almost 1k. I believe this is a fake invoice from someone he knows doing a favour but what are my options here? Ask VCAT to make him provide the bank transfer? (I cropped the part with the details, but the place is real).

Anyways, no VCAT hearing date yet but I'm so so stressed about the whole thing. I have Anika helping me but I'm stil so freaked out.

Any advice or help would be much appreciated.