‘Dead animal’: Sydney renter shares gross reality of house with rent hiked $1400-per-month

The grim state of a Sydney sharehouse, which will see its rent hiked by $700 a week has been revealed, with the tenant sharing a gross theory.

The grim state of a Sydney sharehouse, which shocked people when it was hiked by $700 a week has been revealed, as one tenant shared an interesting theory about the hike.

Chantelle Schmidt was blindsided when she received a letter last week informing her the rent for her Redfern share house would jump from $1900 to $2600 a fortnight.

The letter explained the reason for the rent increase was “to bring rent in line with what the current market is achieving”.

Ms Schmidt went viral after posting about her predicament on TikTok, later appearing on Nine’s Today show.

Chantelle Schmidt suspected the rent hike had to do with the housemates raising an issue of a terrible small. Picture: TikTok/@chantellecschmidt

In an update posted to her TikTok on Friday, Ms Schmidt said she believes the decision to increase the rent could be tied to a “dead animal smell” the housemates complained about the day before they were notified of the rise.

In the TikTok video, she questioned: “Is my $700 rent increase linked to this?”

Ms Schmidt said the housemates “can’t just move out”. Picture: Instagram

She then showed an email chain between her housemate and their real estate agent in which she asked on February 6 if someone could inspect an “unliveable (sic) stench” that was coming from the ground floor, which kept them from sleeping.

The housemate explained she suspected it could be from a dead animal.

Ms Rangiheuea expressed concern about the smell in her own video. Picture: TikTok/@JulesRangi

After asking if someone could come to inspect the stench, the real estate agent responded: “That’s an odd one … I will see if the landlord can have a look around”.

But despite a follow-up email from the housemate saying the stench had moved up to the second floor, their next correspondence with the real estate agent was not about these concerns.

The following day the tenants were informed that their rent had increased to $2600 per fortnight.

There was a list. Picture: TikTok/@JulesRangi

The “dead animal smell” was also referenced in another TikTok video posted by the housemate, which began with the words: “Things in our $2600 per fortnight townhouse that just make sense – Sydney Rental Crisis edition”.

She pictured and listed an array of issues, including “water damage and mould that gets worse every time it rains, a hole in the floor from said water damage, cockroach infestation and dead animal smell coming from the bottom level”.

“Yes, we’ve raised these issues with our real estate agent multiple times,” she wrote with a sarcastic heart-face emoji.

The two housemates are freelance writers and podcast hosts who – after failing to negotiate a compromise on the increased amount with the landlord – now face the difficulty of potentially having to move out in an extremely tight rental market with little supply.

There are currently just 31,000 residential rental properties available across the entire country.

“Everyone was saying move out, but you can’t,” she told the Today show on Wednesday.