21 March 2023
In this instalment of Market Minutes we discuss vacating your property and tips that our property management team can give you as the tenant vacating.
Transcription:
John Cunningham:
Hi, it’s John Cunningham from Cunningham’s with today’s instalment of Market Minutes. With me today I have Emily and Stefano. Thanks, guys, for joining us.
Emily Crosweller:
No worries.
John Cunningham:
We’re going to talk about some important issues around property management and one of the big things that we come across is tenants vacating properties and the problems that occur as a result of that. So to make it as smooth as possible, what’s your top tips, we’ll start with Stefano, for tenants to actually make that transition into moving out smoothly?
Stefano Castorina:
We would recommend organizing a professional cleaner, John. A lot of the time if we have someone we would recommend one of our cleaners, they’ve got the correct insurance, we’ve used them for quite a while, we highly recommend them. If there are any issues with the cleaning once the keys are returned, we just organize them to go back so it removes any stress from you guys or from the tenant and it just makes our job a lot easier. It speeds up your bond process.
John Cunningham:
Great. From your perspective, Emily, anything else you’d like to add to that?
Emily Crosweller:
Yeah. Look, it’s almost a guarantee that the tenant’s going to get their bond back based on the cleaning because the cleaners, they go through, they know the standard that it is to be returned to. It’s a stress-free process for the tenant. If there are anything that’s being missed, we can organize the cleaners to go back, as Stefano mentioned, and it just creates a lot less havoc for tenants. They can move out, move into the next place, and then just rest assured that their place is going to be cleaned and the bond’s going to be returned.
John Cunningham:
It sounds to me like the main thing they really need to do is make sure they’re prepared beforehand. In other words, talk to their property manager, make sure they understand the expectations about what type of property needs to be handed back over and then they can have smooth sailing from there.
Emily Crosweller:
That’s right. Yep.
John Cunningham:
Great. In the unlikely event that a tenant needs to go back and rectify issues that have been come up in a final inspection, what timeframe would we expect them to actually to adhere to that?
Emily Crosweller:
Well, Office of Fair Trading gives a general time of 48 hours, which we find is quite reasonable. We do have tenants move in pretty much a day or so after a tenancy ends, so it’s very imperative that they do go back and to adhere to these timeframes. If they can’t, then we’ll organize trades to go and will be deducted from the bond.
John Cunningham:
At the end of the day every tenant wants to get their bond back, don’t they? So what we recommend is critical that they follow the advice to make sure it’s a smooth sailing for everyone.
Stefano Castorina:
Yeah, that’s right.
John Cunningham:
Stefano, when a tenant does move out, what are the things they usually forget to check on to make sure they get their bond back?
Stefano Castorina:
So some big things light globes, NBN boxes, tenants always assume that you take the NBN box to the next property, but they’re actually are meant to stay at the property. Some garden maintenance is generally missed too – wall patching. Obviously, there is a standard of wear and tear through a tenancy, and we’ll go through that and explain that to the tenant. But obviously there’s a beyond wear and tear amount to walls and things like that where either the walls will need to be washed down, patch cleaned, or in some serious cases painted if there’s some serious damage.
John Cunningham:
Emily, we’ve talked about the patching, the painting. Some people don’t even match the color, do they?
Emily Crosweller:
No, they don’t. No, and it creates a whole world of havoc.
John Cunningham:
And then the whole apartment has to be painted.
Emily Crosweller:
Absolutely. It just takes out more time, more money, more energy, and you’re better off talking to your property manager first. Get a copy of your ingoing report so you can cross reference that for when you are vacating and you can make sure that you are returning it to the condition that it was given to you.
John Cunningham:
Absolutely critical, isn’t it? At the end of the day, you just want to have a great reference from it, you want to actually move out cleanly, get your bond back. So it is thinking about that through the whole term of the tenancy, isn’t it?
Emily Crosweller:
It is.
John Cunningham:
How am I maintaining the property? How am I going to hand it over? So what we’d highly recommend is just talk to your property manager, give them a call, make sure that you understand exactly what are the requirements. There are obligations on behalf of both the tenant and on the landlord, but the best thing is to be in the know. So thank, Emily, thanks Stefano, really appreciate that, and thanks, people, for tuning in.
