How moving out of Life @ Phahon 18 Condo screwed me over

So I just moved out of my Life @ Phahon 18 condo and am mad. Really mad. It’s been a few days now which means I did wait a few days until ranting but the anger still sticks and gets even worse. Here’s why.

When I was looking for a new place a bit over a year ago I was looking at all the online marketplace and send a request to one of the posts. I got contacted back by what turned out to be an agent and he showed me a few places. Eventually I settled for the place at Life @ Phahon 18. The agent was super nice, helpful, etc so it all felt like a good decision.

The room (and amenities) wasn’t perfect (keep that in mind) but it all seemed to work so it was good enough to move in. Over the next year a few things broke (a/c, toilet flush, etc.) and I always fixed everything by myself as I figured that would be faster than telling the agent who tells the landlord, who tells the condo staff…..big mistake right here.

Now fast forward to me moving out: The agent came together with the landlord to check on the room and as soon as they stepped in they found ‘big problems’. The agent then turned to me saying ‘we got quite a lot of damage in the room’ which caught me very much off guard as I didn’t see ‘lot of damage’ while living there. The problems he referred to:

Quick break down here:

The flooring ‘problem’ was that there were a few sprinkles of paint on the floor which I thought would be gone since I hired the condo cleaning service to clean the apartment before moving out but they clearly didn’t do a good job here. You can’t imagine how fast landlord and agent jumped on that. WE NEED TO REPLACE ALL THE LAMINATE! The more I think about it, the more it feels like they waited for such a moment.

Laminate cabinet: The cabinet under the kitchen sink showed ‘water damage’. Meaning the top of the WOODEN door showed some signs of ‘crumbling’. How does this happen? A) I stood there and sprinkled water on it or B) the sink area isn’t all isolated and hence water dripped down? Who’s fault is that? Right….

I had two self sticking posters on the wall, took them off and now the area behind the poster looks ‘lighter’ than the rest. Hence we gotta paint the WHOLE APARTMENT.

The list continues…

What really gets me mad here is that it seems they waited for this moment and that the agent seemed to be in on it. Within minutes he had people on the phone who gave him quotes on the costs of each item and the landlord seemed rather happy when getting said quotes.

This might be all conspiracy, but the more I think about it, the more it looks like this was kind of planned / agreed upon between those two parties. I’m not saying the place looked cleaner than before I moved in and of course there’s some wear and tear on some parts of the furniture, etc. – but this just seemed way off and exaggerated.

Obviously it’s my fault for not documenting the state of the apartment when moving in and for not filming the interaction when moving out as I was being naive here. Lesson learned. And most def. never going to use such an agent again – neither a Life condo (as their technicians, etc. didn’t really ever help with anything when they were needed but that’s another story).