Judging a Book By It’s Cover

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By bigpumpkin | May 27, 2007

A few years ago, the Hubs and I moved into our current home but chose to keep our other house, just in case we decided to return living in that sentimental place we first played nookie. We hired a property consultant to find us some tenants and soon enough, he brought us a sweet middle aged Malay couple whom we later learnt had five good-looking kids.

Hmmm……it would be nice to have a stable family rent our house rather than some stud swinging bachelors or worst, psycho pressured students. Images of uncleaned vomit and other bodily fluids, broken doors from drunken tempers and damp rooms from clogged toilets; were all sure signs that we should accept a family and nothing else.

They seemed like the nicest people on Planet Earth - Salleh was a Director of a Securities company, Rosie was his well-spoken wife who’d run several cafe businesses, knew all about high-tech coffee machines and took charming care of her kids.

We said yes. Immediately.

Over the months, we’d kept in touch by visiting once every six months or so. Just out of courtesy, we’d bring them some fruit and took the opportunity to catch up with our old neighbours. We’d given them advise when their eldest daughter was about to go for national service training during one of the first batches, since she was going to Kelantan and the Hubs is from Kelantan. We trusted them. They seemed like nice people.

Eight months before they disappeared, they stopped paying their rent. We chased them politely but Rosie had a story that her husband had lost his job and they were in the shit house. She kept promising that if we could just be patient, they would repay us back all that they owed us as they were so embarrassed that they had to owe us money. What to do? Evict them? They had five kids….

So we waited. Alas, when we decided to sell the house and asked the property consultant to value it, he shocked us that there was nobody living there. Zilch. Zero.

Great.

Rosie said they had to leave on emergency because Salleh had found a job in Kedah. They were back in Penang, where she is originally from. She promised that they would come back to KL to get the house cleaned up and pay us back every cent that they owed.

I finally saw the house recently.

My heart broke.

I couldn’t believe the state it was in. The fridge we left for them was completely ruined. The parquet flooring of every room and public space had popped. It was a five bedroom four bathroom house, so imagine how much parquet reconstruction we have to do. One of the bathroom’s sink has vanished. The walls are as dirty as hell with stains and drawings. Nevermind the drains and the garden…….There were water leaks from the water tank in the ceiling. They had left behind all THEIR junk, including a dirty six feet long aquarium. Gosh, I could go on forever.

To think that when we left that house, it was in pristine condition - we even have photographs to prove it. And now…..

What more, not only do they owe use months of rent (even after deposits deducted), we are now left with unpaid Indah Water bills etc amounting to XXX dollars. I am not happy in the least. And of course, they are uncontactable.

In fact, I am totally appalled.

I just cannot believe why they would be so inconsiderate to do such a thing. Was it all planned? Or did they just change their minds about being responsible tenants?

WHY?

In order to sell the house now, we have to spend another XXXXX dollars to get it back to a decent condition before anyone would even give it a second glance.

So much for the mask of integrity.

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