A strong stomach and a sense of humour are two essential ingredients for anyone working as a property manager for residential rentals, according to Rachel Williams, who features in series two of TV2’s Renters.
Williams has been doing the job for three years at Ray White’s Royal Oak branch in Auckland and she never ceases to be amazed by what she finds.
“The last thing we want to be doing is putting off investors coming into the market thinking there’s nothing but drama tenants out there,” Williams says.
“The series does depict a lot of reality stuff that’s newsworthy and interesting to watch, but 80 to 90 per cent of tenants out there are fab.
“But when they go bad, they go bad. If you were dealing with **** every day, I don’t think you could pay a property manager enough.”
Williams has seen many properties that have been left in a filthy state by former tenants, but one that takes the cake looked, on first appearance, to have been fully vacated after she had been forced to take the tenant to a tribunal.
Then she discovered that the tenant had stacked the carport to the roof with all his possessions and rubbish and abandoned it. If that wasn’t enough, there was a rotting three-tonne boat on the section.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Williams. “I was absolutely gobsmacked.”
That was just the start of her problems, as legally she now had to get three different commercial valuations on the boat – and then find a way to remove it.
But the thing that Williams finds most draining in the job is the lies she hears from tenants.
“Sometimes my faith in the human race gets absolutely squashed,” she says. “There’s an element to your own personality where you just truly want to believe people and then all of a sudden you find out that it’s all just been one massive lie. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching.
“I guess at the end of the day, they live their lies as well. They don’t know where the truth ends and the lies start.”
Still, Williams loves her job and manages to laugh about all the trials and tribulations.
She also thinks there is an alternative series that could be done called Slum Lords. “Sometimes we find the owners harder to deal with than the tenants.
Renters TV2 Sunday
-The TV Guide is out today
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