Both landlords and tenants have faced financial hardship during the MCO periods, said Meyven.
PETALING JAYA: Since the implementation of movement control order (MCO), many tenants have faced financial hardship and defaulted in rent.
Different approaches were taken by landlords such as reduced rent during the period of MCO and subsequently during conditional MCO and recovery MCO.
While such moves not only enable tenants to continue paying rent on time, thus avoiding defaulting their payment obligations under the tenancy agreements, it also meant that landlords could continue receiving rent.
Thus this eliminates having to terminate many tenancy agreements on the grounds of default, thereby allowing them to maintain the tenants, said advocate and solicitor Khor Meyven.
“Facing with tenants who have not been paying rent even when the MCO was relaxed, after weighing against the financial commitments of the landlords such as quit rent, assessment, home insurance, and maintenance fee and sinking funds for those who are apartment owners, some landlords have no choice but to terminate the tenancy.
“And thereafter take legal action against their tenants for recovery of outstanding rent and utilities, and even recovery of possession of the rented property when the tenants refused to move out,” she said.
In Malaysia, the Temporary Measures for Reducing the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Bill 2020 was pushed forward to protect tenants from distress actions by prohibiting their landlords to recover outstanding rent for the period from March 18 to August 31, 2020.
“Nevertheless, this does not prevent the landlords from taking other legal action, namely writ action which may entail writ of seizure and sale,” said Meyven.
Find out more during her webinar on this topic today (Sept 26) at 11am at the StarProperty Stay-At-New Home Virtual Fair 2020.
Also check out the list of speakers and their topics slated for the webinars. Each webinar will last up to 45mins and visitors can choose to view each talk by just clicking on a mouse. Visit now at https://bit.ly/SPVirtualFair.
There are also many great property deals at the virtual fair, offered by some of the top developers of the nation. Among them are Matrix Concepts, Symphony Life, Platinum Victory Development, Paramount Property, HCK Group, Tropicana Corporation, Worldwide Holdings and Putra Nilai Development.
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