OPINION
If the doomsdayers are to be believed, the property market in this country is so deeply broken that millennials like me will be renting for the rest of our living days. And, as much as the Property Brothers, Selling Houses Australia-loving side of me is disappointed by my diminishing prospects of home ownership, I actually don’t mind being a renter.
Well, except for one thing: the frustrating close proximity it places me to rental real estate agents.
Truly, there is no one on this earth more detestable than a rental real estate agent. I’ve heard the jokes about lawyers, and used-car salesmen. I know what people think of taxidermists. And, yes, I do have a long-standing feud with every employee of the Australian postal service. (Look, Australia Post, if you don’t like parcels clogging up the storage areas of your post shops, you should probably stay open outside of business hours.)
But real estate agents who manage rental properties are in their own special category.
Not only are they difficult to deal with, incompetent, uncaring and suspiciously untruthful, they appear to delight in being all of the above. And I have the receipts to prove it.
I’ve been a renter in Melbourne for almost a decade, and boy, have I collected a cavalcade of absurd tales of woe regarding my interactions with real estate agents. East of the city, west of the city; in apartments, houses, shitty units above shops and decadent concrete abodes designed for people far better off than me.
Doesn’t matter the dwelling, my real estate agents have always been hopeless – and utterly unapologetic about their incompetence.
There was the house in Brunswick without a letter box, which took so long to be fixed the post office threatened to stop delivering our mail until the situation was resolved.
Doesn’t matter the dwelling, my real estate agents have always been hopeless – and utterly unapologetic about their incompetence.
Or, how about the hole in the floor of our unit, which was right in front of a doorway, meaning we had to leap over the hole like acrobats to get from one room to the next? That one took nine months to be fixed, after a stern communique from the Victorian Tenants’ Union; we lived next door to our real estate agents’ office.
I’ve lived in houses with falling down garage doors – exposing the whole back of our large-windowed house to anyone who wandered down the street – and leaks in the ceiling so bad the whole level flooded every time it rained (in Melbourne that’s like once a week during winter).
And, each time, the real estate agents were suspiciously unable to help. Or they forget to call you back about the work order. Or they just “can’t seem to get onto the landlord”. Or they made “a slight miscalculation” with the rental payment for this month.
And what are we to do, us terminal renters? Where else can we go for our property needs, but to these suspiciously unavailable, unhelpful, sharp-suited, white-toothed devils?
Nowhere, unfortunately – because it’s nearly impossible to rent property in Australia without the help of a real estate agent. And in all these years, throughout all these myriad properties, I’ve never met a good one.
Sure, it sounds like a pretty big generalisation, right? But I’ll ask you right now to close your eyes. Go on, close them. Now: think back. Back to all the rental properties you’ve occupied in the past. Yes, even that one (I know it was awful).
Look deep, deep inside yourself, and admit you’ve never met a good real estate agent either.
