A Te Puke woman has been left with a repair bill of up to $50,000 and is owed $28,000 in unpaid rent after her Rotorua rental was left trashed by her tenants.
Alison Stembridge has come forward in the hope her story will be a warning to other landlords and makethem aware of what they can and can't do.
Miss Stembridge admitted she was naive as to what she was allowed to do under the tenancy rules and blamed herself for the mess she has now been left with. Four years ago she reluctantly rented out her Paradise Valley home to a former family member to try to help them out. She tried to get the tenants to sign a tenancy agreement but they never did.
Miss Stembridge said during the four years she rented out the house she was only paid about six months of rent. Initially she was charging $250 a week for the three-bedroom home but reduced it to $180 when the tenants told her they could not afford to pay any more.
She said she was constantly contacting the tenants to ask them to pay her and they always said they would pay and came up with excuses to not pay.
Miss Stembridge ended up taking her tenants to the Tenancy Tribunal recently and her tenants were ordered to leave and given six weeks' grace to move out and pay the rent. Miss Stembridge said friends contacted her when they saw part of her sleepout being towed away and police were called. She took back possession late last month and her tenants failed to turn up to a second tenancy tribunal hearing.
"Half my back wall was missing. There was no window in the lounge. There are only three walls that don't have any damage. There are no doors in the house."
She said the damage was between $37,000 and $50,000 and she was still owed $28,000 in rent. Miss Stembridge is still working through the courts to get money she is owed, and her home repaired.
