A woman left “terrified” after waking to find her real estate agent in her bedroom has been awarded $1500 in damages.
The woman, who had been leasing the Canberra property with her husband for five years, was asleep in the bedroom with her two-year-old son when the realtor arrived for a scheduled inspection.
Footage shown to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal shows the man did not ring the doorbell outside the apartment building before letting himself in.
The real estate agent claimed to have then knocked several times at the front door of the unit before entering with a master key, though the woman told the tribunal he did not announce his arrival in any way.
According to the tribunal’s published judgment, the “terrified” woman “heard a person in the apartment” and hid under her bedsheets, because she was not wearing her Islamic headscarf.
The tribunal heard after encountering the woman in her bedroom, the agent continued his inspection of the home, and returned to the bedroom a second time to take photos.
“Feeling trapped and concerned for my safety, I began recording from under the bed covers when the agent returned to the bedroom for the second time to take photos,” the woman told the tribunal in evidence.
When asked why he would continue the inspection, the real estate agent told the tribunal he had “seen much stranger things than a person in bed in my inspections”; he “had a job to do” and that he “asked for and received approval to continue”.
Following the incident, the woman and her husband broke their lease and left the property, telling the agent they would not stay without an apology.
The tribunal found the agent’s entry to the apartment constituted trespass, violated the quiet enjoyment of the tenants, and consent was either not given for the inspection to continue or was given under duress.
“Even if some consent was verbally uttered, such consent could only be classified as consent gained under a degree of duress, whether intended or not by the agent or not,” the tribunal found.
“In this tribunal’s view, a woman fearful of someone who has entered her home, embarrassed by her lack of modesty as she repeatedly testified, and in a vulnerable position hiding as she was under sheets, is not in a fair position to conduct such a conversation with a large male, stranger to her, standing unexpectedly in her room.”
The lessor was ordered to pay $1,500 in damages and $635 in filing costs.
The lessor tried to get the entire $2000 bond, but the tribunal ordered $1155 be returned to the tenants, and the remainder be used for “reasonable wear and tear” patching and painting repairs.
