ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A red-faced goon who owns a number of properties in Betoota Heights has been forced to fix one of them up today after finding out the hard way that it’s a renters market right now.
Graham Pooley’s three-bedroom weatherboard home on Green Road has some severe rising damp and mould issues that he’s been able to ignore for a number of years. He’s been able to ignore them because his old tenants were too afraid to ask him to fix it, fearing the 70-year-old would kick them out.
But as the property has been vacant for weeks now, Graham let out a guttural moan in his leasing agent’s office when he suggested now would be a good time to spruce the place up.
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” he yelled.
“Can’t we just paint over it?”
His leasing agent frowned.
“No, that’d be illegal and as your property manager, I can’t advise you to do anything illegal,”
“It’s just that now, you’re competing against all the other landlords in the area for business. I know it’s sad but renters can pretty much name their price now and you have to take it. Now, you probably need to sit down for this next thing I’m going to tell you.”
Graham sat down.
“You might get less than your mortgage repayments in rent. That means you’ll have to pay money from your own pocket to pay your own mortgage.”
With that, Graham’s eyes rolled back in his head and the left side of his face went limp.
He moaned again but this time it sounded like he was drowning.
The leasing agent lept to his feet to call for help but with his right arm, Graham stopped him.
“Noooooo,” he hissed like a punctured basketball.
“Let me die.”
More to come.
