Renting is totally, utterly, irredeemably munted

On eviction threats, rent increases, and real estate agents

A few months ago, my real estate agent threatened me with eviction.

The email was so aggressive, so out of the blue, that I initially thought it was a phishing scam. It said that I owed the princely sum of $86.90 and had until the end of the business day to pay up, or they would terminate my tenancy.

This was quite a shock. Firstly, because I had paid the agreed upon rent, to the cent, without fail for over two years. Secondly, because you need to be behind by a fortnight for a formal eviction process to start.

I got on the phone to discuss the matter with my real estate agent. She was unrepentant. While she couldn’t explain exactly how I owed the money, she was adamant it was owed nonetheless. I then expressed I was upset eviction was threatened at all, considering this was the first I’d heard of the debt, and that any such action would illegal. She uno-reversed my indignation, and went on a rant about how awful tenants are, and that her correspondence was therefore warranted.

The problem, I realised, was that I was not dealing with a rational person. I was dealing with a real estate agent, and they are suit-wearing worm-rat hybrids. A species born and raised in petrol station drop toilets, who rain shit on humanity, as shit was once rained on them.

Honestly, they are a marvel. How is it that real estate agents somehow have the worst qualities of both worms and rats, and none of the utility or charm of either species? This would be an interesting question, were they not acting as gatekeepers between Australians and the housing they need to survive.

I ended the the phone call with this agent and asked that supporting documents demonstrating how my debt was accrued be sent to me in writing.

A long meandering email with contextless numbers copy-and-pasted from spreadsheets soon arrived, along with this arse-tumour of a sentence.

“I apologise for how my email has affected you in relation to your arrears due to the incorrect rental amount being paid.”

Yes, it is unfortunate how your illegal threat of eviction made me irrationally upset. But the underlying message was that this was still my fault because I had paid the incorrect amount. Except, whoops! Guess what? It turned out that the real estate agent had entered the wrong figure into their system.

The person owed money was, in fact, me.

If you were a normal person and not, say, a rat-worm hybrid, this would be the time to eat an enormous shit sandwich and drastically change your tone. But that is not the way of the real estate agent.

Instead of an unmitigated apology, I received another turgid email which concluded thusly:

“The positive aspect of todays event has led us to ascertain that the rental amount on your lease did not match the amount entered in the system. I am glad that it allowed us to address this issue before it had continued which would have reflected on your ledger until resolved which would have impacted your future reference for other properties that you could be applying for.

Rather than being very fucked off, as I was, I should actually have been prostrating myself in gratitude. Were it not for being wrongly accused of owing money, the real estate agent’s administrational error would have stopped me from being able to rent a property in the future.

Fucking. Rat. Worm.

The righteous fury that followed this email exchange was biblical. Suffice to say, I was eventually offered a sincere apology from someone several rungs higher in the chain, and have only received solicitously polite correspondences since.

But it shouldn’t have happened at all.

Frankly, I’d rather one hundred more Covids, than a modest increase in the number of real estate agents in the general Australian population. But because this country has skull-fucked the housing situation beyond repair, they are unavoidable. Like suffering, or death.

But the problem isn’t just the type of people this industry attracts — those born too late to join the Gestapo. With enough oversight or regulation, even the most voracious rat-worms can be kept in line.

In Australia however, they are emboldened by a state-created power imbalance between renters and real estate agents. We have given small people infinite power over the fundamental human right to safe and secure housing.

It is an utter fucking crisis.

It’s always been like this in Australia. Dealing with slumlords, grubby share houses and dilapidated rentals was practically a rite of passage. But renting used to be a transitory state. A shit layover we endured on the way to the eminently achievable promised land of homeownership.

That now seems like an impossible goal for so many millennials and zoomers. Houses are extraordinarily expensive, wages are stagnant, interest rates are high, and it seems that no industry is immune to layoffs. It’s a tremendously bitter pill to swallow. But perhaps this would be manageable, if renting wasn’t such a fucking expensive ball-ache.

Most of my money goes towards housing these days. It is my single biggest expense. I have just heard that my rent will go up again when my lease expires – that will be the third time in three years. The eastern suburbs of Sydney are expensive, and sure, moving is always an option. But there are no cheap rentals anymore. Even in the backlots of the inner west, there are studios for $500 a week where you can take a shit, stir your dinner, and make your bed all at the same time.

As a single person, I am clinging to this city by my nails because I am forced to throw fistloads of cash into rent. In exchange? I get treated like a delinquent child caught shoplifting by a vindictive suit-wearing rat-worm spawned from a toilet.

Renting is now an inescapable purgatory for a good part of two entire generations. No one in Government seems to be even passingly interested in fixing the situation. It would take so little to materially improve matters, the complete inaction makes me want to chew through my apartment’s walls in a rage.

My story is as common as a cold. I am just one person in a generation that’s adrift, in a country which refuses to acknowledge there is a problem, let alone address it. I’m not sure what the breaking point is, but I feel like it’s fast approaching. For me, for my generation, and for this glorious but cripplingly expensive city I love.

If we are forced to go, let’s lock the door behind us. May Sydney’s final gift be sealing the worst of this country in one place. Leave it for the rich, the damned, and the real estate agents.

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