What are the risks to your tenancy when a neighbour causes damage to a property that you rent?

In this case a real world example is when a property consists of three dwelling, two managed by a real estate agent and the other direct leased by the owner.

The tenant's in the landlords direct lease does not receive periodic inspections that the other two dwellings receive from the real estate agent.

In this example the direct lease tenants have continued to use a smoker that fills the connected property with smoke, taints any washing on the line and causes residents to have headaches and nausea.

The risk to the adjoining tenants is that the offending tenant is causing smoke damage to the property that you lease under a lease agreement and the offending tenants are not under the same lease agreements. In particular you are responsible for damage to paint and property and in particular in the Northern Territory Administrative Tribunal they have upheld liability of tenants for smoke damage that they had not caused.

In cases where property damage is caused by someone other than you as a tenant it is critical to report to your agent and ensure you keep a record of the correspondence in case you need this at the end of a lease.

In the above example reporting to both agent and landlord has proven not to be effective in the offending tenants behaviour.