A woman has been left with a repair bill of up to $50,000 and is owed $28,000 in unpaid rent after her Rotorua home was left trashed by her tenants.
Alison Stembridge, who lives in Te Puke, has come forward in the hope her story will be a warning to other landlords and make them 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' worth 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.
Miss Stembridge said she was told by friends that should have been a "red flag".
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 said she felt sorry for her tenants as they had four children. However, she felt like she was begging for money owed to her.
She said she had an accident, her mother was not well and she was working several jobs to pay the mortgage and did not have time to keep chasing her tenants.
Miss Stembridge said the tenants kept telling her how much they loved it in her home and she had let them stay.
"Every month I'd be ringing them. I got to the stage where I didn't open my bank statements. I didn't want to know."
"I was a muggins. I'm totally to blame for not getting on their case."
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 from the property, and police were called.
Miss Stembridge took back possession late last month and her tenants failed to turn up to a second tenancy tribunal hearing that day.
The tenants were supposed to be at the Paradise Valley home for an inspection and to hand back the keys, but they failed to turn up. "And that's when the shock hit, the damage that had been done. Half my back wall was missing. There was no window in the lounge. There are only three walls [in the house] that don't have any damage. There was an axe mark in the floor in a bedroom. There are no doors in the house."
Miss Stembridge said the tenants had used her wallpaper which had been stored in her shed to cover up some of the holes in the wall.
"It's a house with its heart torn out. We loved that house."
She said her former late partner Des Kelly, who died a few years ago, would have been so upset. They had owned the house for 20 years.
She said the damage to the property was between $37,000 and $50,000 and the family still owed her $28,000 in rent.
Miss Stembridge is still working through the courts to try to get some of the money she is owed, and her home repaired.
All she wants is for her tenants to be accountable for what they have done.
She said she was not sure if she would be a landlord again.
"I can't say 'no I wouldn't be a landlord' but I would be a good landlord ... I was ignorant of the law to my detriment."
Rotorua Daily Post
