An Australian woman was looking for a place to live in Sydney in the middle of a rental crisis. When she found an affordable place close to the city, she considered herself lucky — until she found out her landlord was living outside her place and using her bathroom and kitchen when she wasn't around. The woman, Tahlia Smith, described the experience on TikTok.
Tahlia and her husband were moving to Sydney from Brisbane. "We were naïve," Tahlia said in the video. "We had never been to Sydney before." She said the place they found was fully furnished, affordable, and close to the city, so they thought it was a great deal.
According to Tahlia, the couple thought that they were going about the process in the correct way since they used a real estate company that was "legitimate" and "well-known."
"I would never recommend that one in particular, but I'm not going to name them," Tahlia said.
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But they grew more suspicious when they picked up the keys and arrived at the property. "The screen door was locked but the main door was opened," Tahlia said. "The place smelled like it had just been cleaned like ten minutes before."
She added that the lights were on and the fan was on, even though they had not been like that earlier in the day.
“Was somebody living in here, like an hour ago?” she wondered. There was also food inside the house. Despite these suspicions, Tahlia said she and her husband lived there for a while. After some time, they started to notice a woman near their house.
She said she would see the woman check the mail and go through trash cans. The situation became even more alarming on a day when Tahlia was working from home and facing the window. She saw the woman, who she knew was not a tenant in the area, sitting in their yard and drinking tea.
"I was like, 'who is this lady?'" Tahlia said. When she mentioned it to the real estate company, she was told not to worry about it because the woman would be leaving soon.
Turns out, the woman was the owner of the property and was living on the street in a van. Tahlia found out the woman had been using the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry inside the house without the couple's permission (and without them knowing that it was even happening).
In the comments on the video, some were shocked, and others could actually relate to the situation.
"Are you kidding me?!!" one person wrote. "I’m so glad you’re out of there!!!!"
"Just moved out of property where I came and found the owner in my bathroom with the door closed telling me not to come in!" one person wrote.
Watch Tahlia's video for the full story.
