Lease expires before our home is finished

sociangal · Oct 02, 2020 10:16 am

Our home is due to finish by November or December. However our lease expires on the first week of November. We messaged the landlord before that we would like to extend our lease for another 3 months but we did not get a response and yesterday we received a notice for eviction. 😭

We will now email the landlord again and ask for periodic lease but I’m still preparing for a worse case scenario. We are good tenants paying on time and always keep the house neat and tidy, I think it is so mean to ignore our request. We did not even complain when they increased our rent during pandemic even if they’re not supposed to do that. We just avoid drama.

Our plan is to put our belongings in personal storage hire and either rent a hotel or Airbnb while waiting for our house to finish. Hopefully it will only take a month. I know it will be expensive but that’s the only choice we can think of.

We don’t want to bother our friends because we are four members with one toddler and I personally will be uncomfortable too.

Are there any more cheaper suggestions that we can do?

Any advice will be much appreciated!

arcadelt · Oct 02, 2020 10:20 am

sociangal

Any advice will be much appreciated!

What state do you live in, because laws differ?

KameGame · Oct 02, 2020 10:25 am

Eviction is harsh, probably given the landlord and agent now know you're going to vacate anyways they did not see any merit in extending your lease. Have you looked at lease transfers? i.e take up someone else'e lease if there only a few month left.
I reckon there's a group on FB for this.

Muhammad · Oct 02, 2020 11:17 am

If you're in QLD, what usually happens is (a month or two before your lease expiry) your landlord or property manager issues you with a notice of lease expiry and a request for you to confirm if you're continuing to lease or not. If you say no, then they issue you with an exit notice and the checklist of things to do before you vacate by the expiry date. There should be no eviction unless you've done something in breach of your lease.

You did the right thing by requesting an extension and they should have replied properly with a yes or no. I'm in the same situation and landlord did not extend for 2 months (even though I've rented here for 6 years) so I'll be moving stuff into storage and staying with family until my construction is complete.

Please let us know how you go. You may want to speak to a lawyer friend to assess your circumstances and also speak to the RTA.

sociangal · Oct 02, 2020 11:49 am

arcadelt

sociangal

Any advice will be much appreciated!

What state do you live in, because laws differ?

South Australia

arcadelt · Oct 02, 2020 12:29 pm

sociangal

South Australia

OK, it seems SA is a little behind other states, so only 28 days notice is required to terminate a fixed term tenancy after it expires by the landlord or agent issuing Form 2A. I thought you might have greater rights or more notice, but unfortunately not.

You might like to call the South Australian Tenants' Information and Advisory Service and see if they can offer any better information.

https://www.syc.net.au/home/housing-support/tias/

sociangal · Oct 02, 2020 1:11 pm

arcadelt

sociangal

South Australia

OK, it seems SA is a little behind other states, so only 28 days notice is required to terminate a fixed term tenancy after it expires by the landlord or agent issuing Form 2A. I thought you might have greater rights or more notice, but unfortunately not.

You might like to call the South Australian Tenants' Information and Advisory Service and see if they can offer any better information.

https://www.syc.net.au/home/housing-support/tias/

Sigh* thanks for the info. Unfortunately they did not approve of the periodic tenancy. I seriously have a grudge with that landlord now. Wishing he gets a bad tenant after us grrrrr.

So we’ll proceed with the plan going for Airbnb. It’s much cheaper than a hotel atleast.

So much stress. We only have four weeks to prepare all these things.

Thanks for all the responses.