Karratha tenants urged to read up on rental rights after consumer complaints skyrocket

As rental prices in one of the Pilbara’s biggest towns continue to skyrocket, the consumer watchdog has urged tenants to brush up on their rights and stand firm when it came to maintenance and unexpected visits. In 2021, Consumer Protection received nearly 200 complaints relating to repair and maintenance issues and about 30 complaints on unexpected visits statewide. Several of the complaints revealed claims of landlords and real estate agents turning up unannounced for a variety of reasons including maintenance issues and rent collection, and claims of delayed repairs. Karratha tenant Darrell Wilkinson said his repairs kept getting put off for no reason. “I’m still waiting for cyclone repairs from nearly three years ago and one of them is a major repair, I can’t lock up the shed and the garage which is obviously a security concern,” he said. “And for the actual inspections that they do, they give you a timeframe between 8am and 5pm and at 1pm, when I’ve had to take work off, they said they were no longer coming and we have this problem every time.” Queensland resident Lee, surname withheld, was renting a property in Karratha for over 12 months and said there was very little to no maintenance done. “It was a four-bedroom house and we had no air conditioners, we had four out of the six air conditioners not working for nearly nine months,” he said “It was $450 a week, we received a notice during COVID saying it would go up to $750 a week and the owner turned up to check the yard and I said ‘mate, you can’t be here’. “I said ‘you rip everyone off, you’re trying to jump our rent when you can’t’ and he goes, ‘I’m going to be a millionaire off this property’.” Mr Lee also said how he was scared to “rock the boat” because of how tight the rental market was. “As soon as one real estate doesn’t like you, they put a black mark against your name and it took eight months to get a place in Gladstone in Queensland because we were getting poor reports,” he said. WA Consumer Protection Pilbara senior regional officer Gwynneth Haywood said tenants should familiarise themselves with their lease agreements. “The problem sometimes for tenants is that it is such a tight rental market and they can only just afford the rent in the property they’ve got,” she said. “They’ve got a property and they don’t want to rock the boat and so it’s actually quite hard sometimes to tell a landlord ‘no, you can’t do this’. “I suggest the tenants read their lease agreements because that gives them a lot of information . . .. the (Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety) would suggest the tenants brush up on their rights if they’re not sure or visit our website.”