Please be careful when renting this apartment

[ex-sgexpat]

Hi Folks,
we recently moved out of our Singapore rental apartment in Lucida condo. We would like to share our bad experience of dealing with the rental agent and the landlord at our last rental apartment. When we moved in, like all normal rental contracts, we had 1 month's time within which we can request the agent/landlord to fix the pending issues in the house. The agent sent us a handyman who was quite unhelpful and did not fix a lot of the problems that we pointed out stating that it's nothing major or it's just a bit loose or the door of the washing machine is just a bit tight or the doors of the apartment tend to hang a bit...blaming it on the inherent nature of the house. I had highlighted these issues to the agent upfront as well as informed him that the handyman was not helpful. Unfortunately, the agent was not too responsive either and kept avoiding my calls by saying he is usually overseas, however, I made sure I keep him informed. During the course of our stay in the house, there were serious plumbing issues with the apartment which resulted in damaging our furniture when the balcony flooded. The same handyman arrived and again was not helpful and kept suggesting temporary solutions to the flooding problem.
However, at the time of vacating the house - we discovered that our landlord was actually the handyman who had never revealed his identity to us. Naturally, it made sense why did he never help us with the repairs within the house or willfully let the damage get worse - so that he could bill us for the cost of the damage. We ended up paying for a lot of repairs in the house which were to be borne by the landlord in the first place. What happened was illegal because - a) the landlord is supposed to take prior permission to visit the rental premises - this was violated b) this was against the code of professional ethics of the rental agent who was supposed to inform us about this. When we questioned the agent, he simply refused to respond. Since, we were leaving Singapore, we did not take any follow up action but would want to share this incident with fellow expats who may end up dealing with this agent. So, please beware of renting in this unit on the 3rd floor of Lucida condo in Novena.

[meow meow]

Hi

Possible to share the agent from which company and he or her name.

Thanks

[sundaymorningstaple]

As this forum is hosted by a real estate portal, we cannot allow that information to be posted. Sorry. - moderator

[meow meow]

Thanks