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Our neighbourhood has had a string of plant thiefs lately and our place has been the most recently hit.
One of our flowering trees in our front yard was stolen.
As soon as we noticed the giant hole in the ground, we took a picture of it and emailed our real estate agent who is on christmas break. We figured, even if she didn’t see the email untill she got back, atleast we reported it as soon as we knew.
However, to our surprise she did get back to us. Stating she would have to check, but she was pretty sure we are liable to replace (at our cost) the tree.
That doesn’t seem right to me. Why should we have to replace something that was stolen? It was in the front yard (which we don’t use often due to the garage being at the back of the house), and there’s no security of any sort. How are we supposed to have prevented the tree being stolen? On that note, who would even think they would need to secure a tree from being stolen? Who steals a tree?
Any thoughts?
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Replies
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I presume you are renting?
No, you are not responsible for replacing a stolen tree.
I am not aware of legislation to quote but it is so obviously not your fault or responsibility that I would just stick with saying that unless someone else here comes up with something better. So long as you keep diligently up to date with rent and anything else you are responsible for, I would just stick with not paying for a tree.
If someone, not you, stole the letterbox and you promptly reported it, you would not have to buy a new letterbox. On the other hand you could reasonably ask the owner (or their agent) to replace the letterbox so you could receive letters.
Yes, you are expected to keep the garden in reasonable condition, but no, you should not be expected to replace a stolen tree.
If the agent gets heavy about this, you say that two highly esteemed 😉 ‘strata gurus’ on Flat-Chat have advised that you don’t need to replace a stolen tree.
Relax and enjoy Christmas.
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