Renting in Sydney, came home Tuesday 21/2 to the skylight on top of our two storey townhouse missing and rain pouring through the whole. SES were lifesavers and patched it with a tarpaulin.
Since Tuesday, RE and Strata have only sent out 1 tradie to inspect/quote to fix with no other contact since in regards to timelines or next steps.
How long would you give RE and Strata to fix before you really escalated and expected a fix?
How Long Is Reasonable Time to Get Our Rental Roof Fixed?
LMadsmiley on 07/03/2023 - 19:04
Comments
before you really escalated and expected a fix?
If you didn't notice. Landlords have all the power and you should be focus on not pissing them off.
Unless they are willing to go the whole way, NCAT and recovery for damages :-)
In any country where the real estate industry has a shred of integrity: Less than one week.
In Straya: You’d be lucky to have it done under a month.
Bit silly comment. Do you expect the landlord or the real estate agent to climb up and install another one?
If so, why can't the tenant do it and get the materials reimbursed?
why can't the tenant do it and get the materials reimbursed?
They can…? It's part of all tenancy legislation nationwide.
Doesn't mean they should, especially if they are inexperienced in working at heights or with weather sealing. It's still the agent's responsibility even if the tenant pays upfront for parts/labour.
Do you expect the landlord or the real estate agent to climb up and install another one?
Sure. I'd love to see an REA climb onto a roof to repair it in their $3000 Hugo Boss suit. But alas, we don't live in a utopia. REAs wouldn't have any idea how to seal a draughty window let alone replace a skylight, they'd probably use sticky tape and acrylic sheeting.
If so, why can't the tenant do it and get the materials reimbursed?
Because sometimes you should just let people who have intermediate or expert knowledge take care of business. Would you be happy for your tenant (whom you might hardly know) to be making repairs to your property? Shows like The Block have given lay people way too much confidence in DIY home repair and when people don't do their jobs right that's when sh*t goes wrong, e.g. Opal Towers.
Because sometimes you should just let people who have intermediate or expert knowledge take care of business.
Exactly. And there's a shortage of experts compared to the anount of work at the moment, esp. after the spate of natural hazard events.
So a week or even a month might not be realistic unless agent, landlors, tenant, etc. get up there and do the work.
Landlords are quick to charge the highest rent, but will drag their feet as long as possible finding the cheapest tradie. They'll keep it a tarp until you move out if you let them.
And if OP does move out there’ll no doubt be a sucker who will gladly move in and pay 30% more rent…
0 days. That is an emergency repair.
You can pay for an emergency repair yourself and then make the PM pay you back (note, I have done this, rules may have changed, there is a cap to how much you can spend).
Well they have made an emergency repair. But now they need to be making reasonable efforts for a permanent repair.
A tarp is not, by any measure, an emergency 'repair'. It's a method of minimising further damage.
An emergency repair is a sheet of plywood installed to make the roof watertight until the window gets replaced. That hasn't even happened.
I don't know if Albo can really afford it. Yeah he's a landlord himself, but he's only renting out his own family home while he's in The Lodge. He can probably afford to fix one window but if every landlord in the country sent him their bills for repair he'd probably be bankrupt in months.
A few months ago I had a roof issue and needed a roof plumber to fix a fairly urgent issue.
I called about 30 places / tradespersons.
Roughly 50% didn't pick up the phone, went to voice mail and never called back, about 30% called back or picked up and told me they were not taking on any more work.
10% told me they were not doing odd jobs only whole roofs or minimum 6 week wait time just to quote.
Leaving me to deal with the 1 in 10.
1 week for them to come out for a look.
2 weeks to order valley irons, gutters, down pipes and flashings.
An additional 2 weeks for someone to come and do the work.This is my experience in Sydney with roof repairs too. The tradespeople have more work than they can handle and getting someone to come out to quote and fix can be very difficult.
I rang a tradie trying to get a gas heater fixed (leaking) and he asked how I even got his phone number. It was listed on the Brivis webpage as supporting that heater, apparently he gave them the number he actually answers by mistake. Basically gave me a "hell no" as a response.
Been impossible to actually find anyone, there's no hardware to make a margin on and it'll be a crap job because the whole thing just needs to be ripped out and it won't be replaced (have a split system instead to do the heating).
Air tasker
Sounds horrible.
What's the excuse for the REA leaving OP in the dark on the progress?
They are too busy running unofficial get the lease best bribe games :)
NSW Fair Trading - emergency repairs
In QLD there is the 'Notice to Remedy Breach' form which forces the tenant or landlord to comply with the tenancy agreement in a specified time period for significant issues like this, where you've already tried to get it resolved directly. I don't know if NSW has an equivalent or you take your issue direct to Fair Trading instead.
A couple of years ago my insurer took 6 months to fix a roof that a tree fell on in Qld. The tenants got rent reduction and were about to pack up and leave as it was finished. Glad they stayed as they are good long term tenants.
I rode the insurer and their 3 useless contactors and was told mine was one of the fast jobs!
PS: my situation was more demanding because it needed an engineering assessment, but just to give you a practical example.
Without comment on how long it should take, I've just (like last week) had my roof fixed from a breakage last March.
How Long Is Reasonable Time to Get Our Rental Roof Fixed
Depends at the time on individual and system factors: size and complexity of your job and availability of tradies (amount of work on hand, e.g. during a recession or after a big storm).
They might be struggling to get tradies to fix just a skylight. Not necessarily the owner or REA dragging their heels.