Jordie van den Berg, AKA purplepingers, started exposing what he calls “shit rentals” because he thinks having a bad experience with a real estate agent is a universal experience for young Australians.
The Melbourne-based 27-year-old makes videos for TikTok where he superimposes photos from real estate listings and goes through their price, photos and description to fact-check the agent's claims.
Some of the listings he has called out have had holes in the ceiling, boarded-over windows and stained carpets.
Others are warehouses or shop fronts that have been poorly converted into residential dwellings and offered for lease on real estate websites.
Recently he found a place that appeared to have asbestos exposed on a pipe.
“The previous tenants told me about the property as they were moving out of it because the landlord refused to fix many of the things that were wrong with it and gave them a rent increase,” he told The Feed.
The rental listing has since been taken down.
Contacting councils over illegally subdivided properties
Jordie, who is a qualified lawyer and works as a public servant, has a keen eye for properties that look like they may have been illegally subdivided.
He will then email or call the local council to see if the property has put in a request to subdivide.
“The ones I report to the council are usually development-related. Usually what I look for is if it is a granny flat or a carpark conversion,” he said.
“Those can be legal but I’ll look to see if there is a post box out front, whether they have a smoke alarm - because if you subdivide a property you need to have a fire safety certificate and that will involve a smoke alarm or fire extinguisher.
“Other red flags are any dodgy insulation and if they have exposed plumbing in the walls.”
One listing Jordie highlighted that appeared to be illegally subdivided was in Mascot, Sydney. It was a granny flat advertised for lease at $360 a week.
The ‘kitchen’ consisted of a small sink unit with three drawers attached to it. There was no stove top or oven in the rental, nor a smoke alarm.
Another property Jordie made a video on was in Cabramatta, Sydney. It also appeared to be illegally subdivided.
The cooking facilities consisted of a stove top on a bench with an LPG gas tank on the floor below. The property was being advertised for $280 per week.
Jordie says he has had mixed results from councils.
“Some of the councils are really good, like ones in NSW and Victoria I’ve found are. But I’ve found the ones in Queensland don’t usually care too much,” he said.
“(if they are illegally subdivided) I’ll call the real estate agent and just be pretty straight up, usually they’ll say ‘oh, I didn’t know about that’ and take the listing down.
“Then other times I’ve asked them, ‘Is this actually an approved dwelling?’ And they're like, ‘Yeah of course’.
“Then I’ll tell them I've spoken to the council and there is no record blah blah blah. And they’ll respond with ’it sounds like you're in the know. So this place probably isn't the place for you’.
Jordie van den Berg makes TikTok 'greenscreen' videos with photos of dodgy rentals superimposed behind him.
Changing rental trends
In the year-and-a-half that Jordie has been making these videos, he’s noticed stark changes in the rental market.
He says that the amount of time that bad rental listings will stay up on websites has shrunk.
“I get a lot of people sending me bad listings to make videos about and it used to be that I could look at it a week or two later and it’d still be there,” he said.
“Now, it's like, I'll get a submission. If I don't look at it that day. It's gone. That's because people are more desperate for rental properties now.”
Another trend he has noticed is that a lot of the really bad listings are moving off real estate websites and onto Gumtree listings, Facebook marketplace and Facebook groups.
“It’s because the listings on these places are usually cheaper and will go pretty quick cause people looking in there are more desperate.”
“When you look in the description for a lot of these rentals it usually has a licensed agent’s contact details.
“They also post on private Facebook groups where the media can’t access it as easily.”
Inner-city Sydney and Melbourne are the worst affected areas
Jordie says that he’s noticed the inner-city suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne consistently showing up with low quality rentals.
“In Sydney's inner-west I’ve seen houses scheduled for demolition a long time ago that have been rented out to some poor tenants who can’t afford anything else.
“In Melbourne, you've got quite a few areas like Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Brunswick. Those are hotspots because there's so many people that want to go there that the shit places will rent out.”
