Conduct and behaviour unsuited to any professional agency

The conduct and behaviour of staff from what should be a reputable agency left us open-mouthed. The Live Real Estates staff (Deirde Dumas and Jeanae Dumas) treated us in a way I have never seen in any professional capacity.

The issues from start to finish were many and were serious. Including: missing selling the property, the property being unsafe including a gas leak that remained unattended for weeks, violation of privacy; including being spied on by the landlord via his housekeeper, ******** deductions from the deposit, and misappropriation of gas. taking us off the safe Airbnb platform into an unsafe private lease, health and safety issues; including the temperature internally being below the legal minimum, dangers to health from damp and gas. *

* See bottom of the review

Our treatment of the final day was simply beyond our comprehension. The lack of contact since then only served to compound the deeply unprofessional conduct. And serves to demonstrate our theory at the time to be correct; that the agents colluded with the landlord Perter Van Der Spuy and the landlord’s PA Levanah Grafton well before the lease ended with a clear plan to take all or part of the deposit paid despite having no right to do so.

Their plan is made all the worse as the landlord is a very wealthy individual. with multiple very expensive properties, Porches, Range Rover, motorbike collection etc. The deposit was paid by a 75-year-old pensioner with lung cancer from her limited savings.

It has now been over a month since my lease ended at the property managed by Live Real Estate. Not only have they failed to return my deposit they have also failed to communicate with me IN ANY WAY over the last month and have failed to answer my communications.

Last week I emailed the managing director. He did reply promising his assistance in resolving the matter. Suddenly there was hope. But I have heard nothing since.

Considering the behaviour, I reported and the seriousness of their staff’s actions, I had hoped and indeed expected that he would address the matter as a priority. They have shown an ice-cold disregard for the tenant and appear to be complicit in the landlord's clear plan to misappropriate the deposit. A plan he put into action before the tenancy ended.

On the day of check out despite my legally having the property until midnight that day, they effectively forced their way into the property (early and against my wishes) and began to mock, undermine, and patronize the cleaning team and myself.

The cleaning team was so taken aback by their treatment that they filmed much of that experience. The cleaning team stated they found the treatment by the staff of Live Real Estate to be ******, bullying, frightening, and condescending. And I would agree. The cleaners were adamant that race played a major role.

The staff of Live Real Estate and the landlord’s PA Levanah Grafton, spoke to the cleaners and me as if we were refused to be thrown out. To the cleaners especially badly as if their servants. It was a wake-up call to the worst of attitudes towards race in South Africa.

Despite being several hours early, the staff of Live Real Estates ordered the cleaning to stop immediately and that my possessions be thrown into refuse sacks and thrown on the street. We were told we were to pack the boxes on the street.

At this point, they and the PA began ****erally) throwing my clothes and possessions into refuse sacks. Much of it is damaged because of for example putting clothes in the same refuse sacks as cleaning solutions and cloths thick with bleach. Intentional or by accident I cannot say.

An hour later the owner arrives. Intent on making the situation and atmosphere even worse. Coming to the office where I was packing books to tell us we must get out immediately. That the possessions would be thrown onto the street.

At one point batting one of my dogs off the sofa as if he were whacking a tennis ball. At another point, they locked two of the dogs in a small toilet without any reference to me. Ignoring the fact this very clearly distressed the dogs.

Having had the property, I was moving to fall through at the last moment due to a roof leak I was busy not only packing and trying to supervise the cleaning but also trying to find accommodation urgently. The landlord simply said, “Get a hotel room.” Knowing they were giving us minutes to get out, we had not finished packing and that I had three dogs meant that was near impossible. However, the owner and agents did not care one bit and were so incredibly cold that it left us not believing what was going on.

All the while the staff of Live Real Estate found the whole situation, our plight and treatment, very amusing. As if some kind of game. Perhaps mocking us won them brownie points with their client...

This was all especially unexpected as we had paid three hundred thousand rand to the landlord/agent over the previous 4.5 months. So, they had all done very well out of us.

However, once I no longer represented any financial benefit to them their attitude had changed completely. Initially helpful and friendly they became unhelpful, cold, and completely disinterested.

Very clearly now that the rental income would stop when the lease ended, the landlord viewed my deposit as an additional way of taking money.

I had suspected the landlord would try to do this. The property had not been decorated for many years and was certainly in need of redecoration. The two back bedrooms were in a very poor condition which in itself was an indication of how long it's been since the property had been redecorated because had it been redecorated those rooms would have been done at the same time and they had been like that for years.

My suspicion was confirmed when the landlord blocked out five days immediately after my tenancy and no others. I checked and no guests were moving in. Very suspicious in itself

Then when the weekly bedding collection and delivery happened on Monday, for the first time the bedding was collected but none was dropped off. If a guest was checking in it would be essential to have the bedding. If the property had been shown, then the beds would be dressed. If there were no guests but the property was available for rent, then again, the bedding would have been essential as it would need to be ready for occupation at short notice. The only reason you would not have the bedding delivered was if you knew there were going to be no tenant, no viewings, no last-minute tenant…. and very likely there are going to be works which may have caused the bedding to be dusty or damaged in some way.

Then on queue, the landlord decides to make a scene stating the property is covered in soot. Something he had not noticed or commented on when he came in and something the staff of Live Real Estate or his PA had not seen or commented on in the hour, they had been there inspecting the property. Then like dutiful obedient agents they start to echo the landlord's statements.

By chance, I had taken a video two days prior of the whole property to send to a cleaning company for them to quote. When sending a video so a cleaning company can queue then clearly you send an honest video that represents the property and any issue they may need to deal with. This video clearly shows the property to be in excellent condition throughout.

Further, even the videos taken by the cleaners on the day accidentally also prove the property was in a perfectly acceptable condition.

This was both disappointing and expected. When he starts on about the soot you can hear me in the background say, “Oh here we go.” As per our expectation, he would try something like that.

His transparent plan is highlighted further when after dramatically going on about how the soot damage was all-consuming, that all he could smell was soot and burnt wood he sniffs the air and says, “And I can smell cigarette smoke, did you smoke in here.” as if sniffing an expensive wine. Not realising the absurdity of saying the smell of soot was all-consuming and overpowering then pretending he could smell undertones of cigarette smoke.

All this was all the more disappointing as I had put up with a huge number of issues over the period of the lease and never once kicked up a fuss.

An entirely one-way relationship, whereby we paid over R300,000 for a lease over the winter months from which the owner and agent did very well.

However, in return what I had was an unsafe, freezing, perpetually dirty property where we were watched, used then discarded.

Including:

Miss-selling of the property: When we first showed the relax yeah. When we were first showing the property, we were told explicitly that the backyard was part of the house. We would not have dreamt of taking the property had it not been as I have three dogs and therefore outside space is the non-negotiable one. Some way into the tenancy neighbor told us very irately that that was part of their land and not ours. Something the landlord knew and yet we were told something entirely different by live real estate. What followed was several weeks of Hell trying to cope with dogs very confused as to where they should go to the toilet and where they shouldn't. Not one word of apology for this misspelling

Unsafe property This included a gas leak whereby an entire 5-litre bottle of gas was discharged into the property over the initial period of our tenancy and that is worse an entire new 5-litre bottle of gas was discharged into the property in less than one week. Bearing in mind the property had a real fire just meters away from where the gas bottle was stored, we were extremely lucky that the place did not blow up. This was reported to lie real estate the landlord the landlord PA and the housekeeper knew. It took several attempts before the leak was fixed.

Invasion of privacy We discovered partway through the tenancy the housekeeper was effectively spying on us for the landlord and the agent's live real estate. I had agreed to have a housekeeper of the landlord who attended one day per week to come for an extra day per week at my expense. He was therefore at the property for two full days out of every seven. And would constantly report back every detail of how we lived on the property what we were doing etcetera. Even sending photographs

******** deductions from the deposit, It is now clear that our original suspicion was correct. The landlord planned to use the deposit well before the tenancy had ended and well before he had seen the property or had it inspected. The excuse he used that there was soot on the walls was in itself not true. But even if there was, the fact that that would have come from the fireplace which was essential to keep the property warm shows that he is clutching at straws to find any reason to use our money to meet his obligations as a landlord. It also shows a complete disregard for the well-being of your tenants.

Despite my sending considerable amounts of information about how one would clean soot off a wall and that a few weeks of having a fireplace would not warrant a full property redecoration we have been ignored. For the simple reason that the truth is inconvenient to his plan

Taking us off the safe Airbnb platform into an unsafe private lease, Initially, we came through the Airbnb platform where we rented the property for several weeks. With hindsight, we should have stayed on the platform where we would have been safe and there would have been no possibility of a landlord or an agent like Live Real Estate taking what does not belong to them. We were persuaded to go and do a private arrangement with the landlord and Live Real Estate and persuaded to pay a large deposit of R130,000. To effectively ditch Airbnb, one assumes to save the landlord on fees, and one would also assume to give the landlord control over a large sum of money for the deposit which they would not have had had we stayed with the Airbnb platform.

Health and Safety Issues A major health and safety issue was that the property was a very large old church that was triple height with huge areas that required heating yet only had one fireplace and two small air con units (one in each bedroom). As such in June and July when the temperature dropped the property was freezing. It was so cold that we would wear three layers of clothes and still be cold. So cold that the bed sheets felt wet to the touch when you got into bed. So cold that there were areas of the property we just simply did not use for example my bathroom. The area around the fireplace or perhaps two meters or more was warm but beyond that, you were freezing. The temperature was measured on several occasions significantly below that which is legally permissible. Not only did the agents do nothing about it they then sought to bill us for redecoration for using the fireplace to keep ourselves warm.

Cleanliness. Despite having the landlord's housekeeper for two full days out of every seven nothing was ever cleaned fully and that accumulated over time. In the main, it was just me to look after and no more than two people so there were more than enough man-hours in the two full days per week to keep on top of the property and ensure that it was pristine. The landlord seemed to miss the irony that they were chastising me on issues of cleanliness on exit when it was his housekeeper who had been employed there for two full days out of every seven. Even though I sent them pictures showing that my feet were filthy and black underneath just hours after he had finished one of his daily cleans again this was completely ignored. The housekeeper cost me an additional 10,000 over the course of the lease and yet at the end of the lease they were seeking to bill me for more cleaning. This is even though they actually aborted the cleaning I was busy doing on the last day of the lease.

So having paid 300,000 Rand to live in a property that was effectively a fridge for much of the lease, one where we were spied on, one where we were nearly gassed and burnt alive in an explosion and one where despite all of that we remained extremely polite, respectful and helpful at the end of the lease the landlord felt it appropriate to eject us early, throw my possessions into refuse sacks and from that on the street, to ridicule, mock and bully myself and the cleaners. To abort the clean and then completely ignore us for the month that followed the end of the lease.

Not once communicate about the R130,000 they hold. Never provide a gas safety certificate. Never providing proof the funds were held in a separate interest-bearing client account.

Whilst there will always be landlords who act outside of the law, who abuse their position, who breach the trust of their tenants and take advantage, we did expect better from Live Real Estates