The hassle of renting is, you need to check out a lot of places with the agents to find the home that you like... some of the places are so terrible that i have no words to describe...some are quite nice but just out of budget... so, my first home in HK is about 8 - 10 mins walk from the MTR station.. everything went well but before i moved out, the landlord decided that the broken pipes were my fault and refused to return me my deposit... broken pipes are wear and tear and should be borne by landlords and what broken pipes anyway?! so we argued a bit and i threatened to sue them to small business tribunal and finally they returned me my deposit..not in full but i didnt bother to argue anymore for a few hundred HK dollars....
the rest of my renting life in HK seem ok after that... then after 5 years in HK, i moved to Shanghai...the first landlord was nice...he gave me dumplings one day that i felt so touched...and he charged me below market value...but he has a vicious wife who forced him to terminate my rent after we just signed the new lease contract... initially i didnt want to execute the penalty part whereby the landlord has to compensate me for a month's rent if he terminates the rental earlier...my agent kept telling me that i should... so i did... he and the wife must have thought that i was a vicious person since the husband charged me lower rent and now i bite them back with compensation... i was just executing the contract..they could have let me stayed till end of the lease... it was an ugly scene coz they didnt want to execute the contract... so i used a lot of ways to negotiate... Negotiate?! i had a contract and still need to negotiate... but i did... i told the landlord that the rent was paid by my company and the lawyers wanted to get compensation from them and i have no choice... and i asked my lawyer colleague to go with me to explain and in the end, the landlord said ok reluctantly but he said he will not pay for the tax portion of the rent...i said, i will bear that for u then (still wanting to show my appreciation for his help in the past)... the moment he said "yes", i took a piece of contract out for him to sign...i said this is our co procedure, please sign your consent to compensate & that we will terminate our contract on xxx.
then i moved to another place nearby where the house gave me miserable time...just after moving in not long later...i found the balcony roof leaking when it rained...so i called the agent to tell the landlord..the landlord said it cannot be fixed..so i asked the agent to tell her that i will have no responsibility for damages on the balcony then..coz she kept her washing machine and other stuff there... then the pipe leaking where i had to leave home for 1 week while workers came in to knock out the toilet floor and only to find out the leak came from the rotten pipe in the balcony... and then things started to go wrong... the paint in the toilet started to peel off, then the wall paper and the noisy neighbors upstairs... the worst is, my landlord wanted me to compensate for wear and tear when i terminated the lease.
because i learned my lesson the most in the last rent, i made sure when i rent a place in sg that i have to make sure there is no leakage problem in the house... how do i know? just by looking at the ceiling to see if there are any water stain...apparently, they told me the piping system in sg apartments are ok..so i felt more relieved... then guess what?! after 3 - 5 months, 3 of the AC at home didnt work...not knowing why and lazy to find out since nobody came to visit...i only have the inspection done after a year...guess what? the AC guy came two weeks ago to test, came back yday to check the result and concluded the AC pipes have holes...and i am now spending my weekend at home, waiting for the workers to open up the ceiling and walls, drill here and there to fix the pipes...it's dusty everywhere and a waste of my time :(
maybe i can just regard this as doing good deeds for the landlords then...baby sitting the house on behalf :( stuck at home and needed to cancel my appointment with my friends.
2 comments:
Another episode of the tenant saga!
Maybe those broken parts just knew u r a nice person that would have them healed. ha ha! cheers!
haha, i think im just being ke poh.. but now that the AC is working perfectly, i'm glad i went through the trouble..just think of it as helping out the landlord lo...i would have needed this kind of help if i had a house to rent out. hahaha
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