I’ve just arrived home from the court case that my tenant instigated. My statement and the work of my lawyer went down without a hitch and you guessed it, we won the case. I will be retaining the bond and my ex-tenant now also has to pay additional money for all the damages she caused to my property. She really shot herself in the foot with this one.
You should have seen her when she walked into the courtroom. She had her shoes on the wrong feet, she hadn’t showered and she didn’t have a lawyer. I have no idea who she was talking about in her voicemails, but she couldn’t have been working on her case with anyone, seeing as no one showed up.
As soon as she mentioned paying for an air conditioning service in Melbourne, my lawyer shut it down as irrelevant to the case. The case was about the damage she had done to my home, not about repairing an aircon that wouldn’t have cost that much money to fix. It seemed to everyone, including the judge, that she had no idea what the actual court case was about. It’s like she fabricated all these things that I had done, when in fact I was the one in the right. Oh well, it made me look better.
Before I get my next tenant in I’m going to spend a long time making sure that there’s nothing people can complain about. I’m going to have video evidence and make it very clear that I will not accept someone paying for air conditioning repairs in Melbourne and then claiming that I’ve been a terrible landlord just because they paid for one thing. Sorry, I’m getting worked up. This has just been a long and for lack of a better word, annoying process.
I’m going to do proper background checks on potential tenants from now on. I shouldn’t have taken this girl at face value.