Landlord loses tenant over $50 mistake

An Australian landlord is considering ditching their property manager after a $50 move that may have cost them a good tenant.

The homeowner, from Queensland, was using a local property manager to look after the investment but things turned sour when the tenant’s lease came up for renewal.

“I received an email from my property manager, checking that I was OK raising the rent by $50 per week,” the landlord said.

“I replied, saying I was not OK with that — it was too much. The tenants were great, they looked after the place, and I didn’t want to lose them.”

The landlord thought that would be the end of the discussion only to receive a reply from the property manager saying they’d already flagged the $50 hike with the tenants.

“Imagine my surprise when the property manager replied saying, ‘I already mentioned it to them, and they happily accepted’,” the landlord said.

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The landlord was frustrated to see how their property manager handled the situation.

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“She had raised the rent without my permission. I went along with it, but lo and behold, before the rise took effect, I received a notification that the tenants were ending the lease.”

The landlord said they were extremely frustrated with the property manager over the whole issue and how they will now need to pay for advertising and marketing to find a new tenant.

Maurice Blackburn legal expert Alison Barrett said the landlord was right to be concerned because the property manager’s actions might have been unlawful.

“A property manager who raises the rent after being told explicitly not to has almost certainly stepped outside the authority she was given, breached her duty to you as her client, and it sounds like she has potentially caused you a financial loss,” Ms Barrett told Yahoo News.

“Your property manager acts on your behalf, but only within the limits you set. That said, even if this was allowed under the management agreement, you expressly told her, in writing, that you did not want the rent raised, and she went ahead and did it.

“From what you have described, it seems like a textbook example of an agent exceeding their actual authority.”