B.C. landlord ordered to pay huge sum to evicted tenant in home reno fight
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A Metro Vancouver landlord attempted to overturn a Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) arbitrator’s decision in the B.C. Supreme Court, seeking to avoid paying a former tenant thousands of dollars.
Fatehjit Kaur filed a petition for judicial review, asking the B.C. Supreme Court to set aside the earlier RTB decision made in February 2023 in the dispute resolution with Melvin Javier.
According to the Reasons for Judgment, Kaur claimed that the original decision by the arbitrator should be set aside because it was both procedurally unfair and patently unreasonable.
Javier lived at the property located at 7520 Garfield Dr. in Delta from Feb. 1, 2021, to May 20, 2022, with a rent of $2,500 a month.
In April 2022, Kaur served her tenant with a two-month notice to end tenancy for the landlord’s use, indicating that she intended to occupy the property with her partner and children effective June 9 of that year.
According to court docs, after Javier vacated the property on June 1, the landlord renovated it throughout the summer. She then sent her former tenant a text message in September that stated in part:
“Hi, how are you doing. Are you looking for rent the house? We fully renovated and extended the house with five bedrooms and four full bathrooms.
“Let me know if you are still interested. I was like I can ask you first. But this time will be $5,000 rent. It’s with AC unit and fireplace, everything brand-new.
“If you want, you can come look at it. Am putting on rent add in this week. So just telling you [in] advance.”
Upon receiving the text, along with photographs of the property, Javier filed an application for dispute resolution at the RTB and claimed 12 months’ rent as compensation.
“At the Hearing, the Landlord and her son stated that the new rental unit they offered to the Tenant in September 2022 was not the Property but instead a property in Surrey that they had also renovated prior to that time,” explained Justice M. Taylor. “The Landlord testified that she did not explain that she was actually offering a rental at the Surrey Property in the text message because English is not her first language.
“[However,] the Tenant testified that he understood the Landlord to be offering to re-rent the same rental unit at the Property, which is located in Delta and not Surrey.”
According to the judgement, some of the photos texted by Kaur to her evicted tenant matched closely with the property’s room configuration while Javier was still renting it.
Kaur testified that she had to renovate the whole house at 7520 Garfield Dr. because there was a water leak, the roof was damaged, and she wanted a new kitchen and a fully renovated home.
Javier refuted this in his testimony, claiming that the property was in good condition and that the single water leak in the basement of a bedroom originated from old pipes, so there was no roof damage.
Upon reviewing all of the evidence, the arbitrator found in favour of Javier for $30,100.
The landlord brought the case to the B.C. Supreme Court in an attempt to get the RTB decision set aside. She also claimed that if she had understood the renovation delay was the issue, she would have presented additional evidence at the hearing to try to explain it.
However, Justice M. Taylor was not persuaded by their grounds for review.
The Justice noted in the Reasons for Judgement that no evidence was presented in Kaur’s petition to suggest that she was denied the chance to present her side.
“Kaur was given the full opportunity to provide the arbitrator with written materials in advance of the Hearing and also to present oral and documentary evidence at the Hearing,” wrote Taylor.
“In my view, the fundamental weakness in the Landlord’s argument is that her argument about procedural unfairness is derived principally from the fact of her own ignorance about the applicable law rather than any specific procedural steps taken or not taken by the arbitrator.”
The Supreme Court decision also noted that the Arbitrator’s factual determination that a three-month reno period was unreasonable was not decided irrationally.
“The Arbitrator clearly accepted the Landlord’s argument that she ultimately did move into the Property in September 2022. Nonetheless, despite accepting these factors, the Arbitrator determined that the length of time taken to renovate the Property before the Landlord moved in was not reasonable.
“In reaching this conclusion, which was consistent with the statutory test, the Arbitrator expressly weighed the evidence of the Landlord concerning the reasons for delays in completing the renovations to the Property and concluded that the Landlord’s testimony was ‘vague’ on this central issue.”
The B.C. Supreme Court upheld the arbitrator’s decision and dismissed the petition from the landlord.
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