"Your Landlord  said that the maintenance of the carpet grass would be done by him," said co-broking rookie agent, Mr Lam.

The Letter of Intent (LOI) prepared by Mr Lam did not mention about garden maintenance and the tenancy agreement had been sealed.

In this case, Mr Lam should have written a list of Landlord's responsibilities in the Letter of Intent and the Tenant's requests.

There were 3 inspections and he would have time to note the requirements but he did not do so. His LOI was very brief and the lease was not given to the expatriate occupant in this case. The lease was one from the Company and was prepared with grammatical errors and excluded the address of the Company.

If the Occupant had read the LOI, she would have remembered the garden maintenance. A LOI should include:

"Cost of gardening services and maintenance of the carpet grass once per week to be borne by the Landlord."

In landed properties, the maintenance of the swimming pool, landscaping, air conditioners and autogate may be included. 

Usually these are the responsibility of the Tenant.

It was difficult as the Landlady was against more expenditure since rental paid was "low".

"The Company wanted to change the lease to the personal lease, since the employee will be paying for his own utilities bill," explained Mr Lam after both the Landlord and Tenant (Company) had signed the Tenancy Agreement.

The Lease was provided by the Company. This was not acceptable. The Company could always deduct the utilities bill from the employee's salary.

We hope this case study would help co-broking agents in the rental housing business. Many omissions are costly and sometimes the agents have to foot the bills out of their commissions.