Nikolina Nolan

Review of First National Real Estate Byr...

Sunrise Boulevard is a beautiful location and the ...

Sunrise Boulevard is a beautiful location and the neighbours are lovely. However are landlord Jade was an unpleasant person to deal with and the property was a nightmare. When we first moved in we were told that laundry and wifi were included in the building. The whole time we were there the wifi never worked. We both have our own businesses and had to be on our laptops quite often. It got to the point where we wanted to sign up with Optus and have our own line. Unfortunately, where the location is, its referred to as a "blackout area" and it took us three months dealing with Optus and our landlord to discover it was actually impossible to get wifi hooked up in that particular area. If we were told this from the beginning we wouldn't have signed a year lease. We ended up hot spotting off our phones for the duration of our stay which was about $5 a day.

As for the laundry machine they offered it was rarely working and therefore we had to cab to and from town to be able to do our washing. When we had made these complaints nothing was ever dealt with. In the end, they informed us that it was a privilege to be able to use it and not in our contract. My partner and I were one of the longest-running tenants. Never had any complaints and we kept to ourselves. When we decided it was time to move we hired two professional cleaners that cost $250 to do our bond clean. Two weeks later when they had come to do a final inspection and we had already left to go back to Canada we were informed that it wasn't to their standards and they would be taking $900 from our damage deposit. We felt completely ripped off and honestly, that had left such a bad taste in our mouth that we decided to reach out here. After talking with a few of our neighbours that had left shortly after moving in they had the same experience when they left. Majority of their damage deposit being taken for such small things, here is just a quick sample. These small things do not add up to $900. Even after paying professional bond cleaners.

Some dirt on skirting boards and in corners of room.
Tear in paint on wall in the study area.
3 x holes in the wall from TV mount.
2 x minor dents below the left-hand side window.
Tops of window frames are not clean.
Blinds are not clean.
Window tracks are not clean.

As for the place itself you pay 1800 a month+ utilities. We should have looked around Byron more because in the summer these little tin roof homes are so excruciating hot that you can't even be inside. The trash is close to the right side of the units that and all year round you can smell it from your property. This is a warning to anyone that is looking at these properties. Please don't make the same mistake we did. We were one of the longest-running tenants in these units and it did damper our stay in Byron. We had no help from our landlord when it was needed and they ended up being crooks at the end.