I thought to write my story to here to warn other people and possibly get some advices if someone knowns things better than me.
I had a short term
condo room rental deal. The deal was made without an agent with a main tenant of the apartment. Beside of normal rent, the deal included one month rent as a deposit, which was agreed to be paid back to me when I move out from the place. The problem is that I never received my deposit back without any valid reason. Since I moved out about 4 months ago, the guy who owns me the deposit money has promised to return the deposit a few times, but nothing has been returned and currently he doesn't answer to my calls or messages anymore.
What has been done after moving out:
1. One month of waiting while sending messages to the main tenant to return the deposit --> nothing is returned
2. I contact another tenant who is staying in the apartment and telling him what has happened with my deposit. A while later the another tenant decides to not to pay his last month's rent and use his deposit money for the rent, because in other case he would also very likely to lose his deposit like me.
3. Filing a case to Singapore Small Claims Tributal
https://app.subcourts.gov.sg/sct/index.aspx/ . The court process lasts about one month totally. The main tenant doesn't show up to the court and court says its my responsibility to make sure that he received the letter to come to the court. After a while I'm able to confirm that he received the letter and the court case continues. The main tenant doesn't still show up to the court, so the court decides that I'm right and orders the main tenant to return the deposit back to me in one month.
4. After a month the deposit is still not returned, so I go to an law company to apply for bailiffs section to sell assets of the guy who owns me the money.
5. After some time the court has accepted my request to use the bailiffs office to retrieve my money. After a lot of bureaucratic bouncing around the bailiffs office tells me that because the guy is only a main tenant of the apartment, they cannot use any enforcing actions to enter the apartment. So basically the guy would need to invite the bailiff in to the apartment so that something could be done. Because in practice this is nearly impossible and I would need to pay the bailiff's salary if this would be tried, I don't want to use money for visiting the condo gate and noticing that the guy doesn't invite us in.
6. I use law company's service to check the real owners of the apartment. I send a postcard to the real owners and request them to speak some sense to the main tenant --> nothing happens
I'm pretty much out of moves now so I probably have to cancel the court case soon and accept the situation. A while ago I discovered that according to Singapore law it is illegal to make short term leases. Therefore I could probably go to the police and make a report. However this option wouldn't return my money back and could possibly cause some problems to me as well, because I might have also break some law while making the short term deal.
What we can learn from this case:
- Always check that you make a rental deal with a real owner of the apartment. If the owner is not staying in the apartment, you also need to know the address where the owner is staying and also make sure that the owner also owns that place.
- If you make rental deal with a main tenant who doesn't own the place, the main tenant can decide to keep your deposit if he wants
- It doesn't really matter did you use agent with the lease. Usually the deposit doesn't go to the agent company, so an agent cannot do much if landlord decides to keep the deposit
- If you are moving out from Singapore in about less than 3 months after the rental contract expires, it doesn't matter at all do you make the deal with real or unreal owner because you won't have enough time to go to the court anyway
Any thoughts?