Tenants caught in landlord-agent row left without power

A DISPUTE between a landlord and a real estate company has left the residents of an upscale residential building off Salwa Road nearly three weeks without electric supply since Monday.

According to the tenants, who are mostly executives with their families, their ordeal began after the landlord served them a notice to renew their contracts in June. The tenants signed contracts with the real estate agent who in turn had a contract, valid until 2012, with the landlord.

According to a spokesman of the landlord, the agent was taken to court after he defaulted on payments. The First Instance court ordered the agent to pay all the dues and hand over the building to its owner.

Following this, the landlord served the notices to the tenants to renew their contracts with him but most of the tenants said they had signed long-term contracts with the agent and many of them said they had even paid the rents in advance for months ahead.

A woman, who was among the first tenants when the building was ready for occupation in 2007, told Gulf Times that June matter was again challenged the lower court’s ruling in the court after the agent claimed he had family was planning to leave the country.

Documents obtained by Gulf Times reveal that the landlord had allowed the agent to “handle” the 33-apartment complex building from June 2007 to May 2012, for a sum of QR364,000 monthly. The agent, it was allowed on May 28, 2007, to sign on the agreement to allow the apartments to individual owners or parties or whoever.

But the agent “defaulted” on the payments on June 26, 2007, as filed on November 7, court verdict was given on January 28, 2008 asking the agent to return the property and the “pay QR18,000 to the landlord in the original condition.”

The tenants were caught by this by stating that “most of the agents have been wed by the court injunction,” and subcontracts are also renegotiated into various terms to sign new contracts with the owner - while the remaining delay will be challenged and “any vision by the court will not have to be accepted, better law of the property owner.”

Meanwhile, some of the residents have taken shelter in hotels around the town. Some have been sleeping in their cars and others managing without electricity and continuing to live in the building.

A tenant said that when he told the landlord’s representatives that he had paid advance checks for two years, they assured him he would get the money back. However, he did not receive any specific date when he could get the money returned.

“We are deprived how could we pay the same price for the same service. Some tenants have signed up for six months, some nine months and paid the deposits and rentals,” they said.

As of yesterday evening, those tenants who had been ‘advised’ by the landlord and their power contacts in the region, paid QR09,000 for the deposit for the whole month.

Landlord agents, who have been using the tactic of selling the units, have caused a great deal of confusion between the tenants and real estate agents and a real power dispute continues to disrupt some tenants’ comfortable living in this situation, said a tenant living on the third floor.