Edmonton tenants claim they were double charged rent after sale of property to new owners

Tenants in Edmonton whose building was sold to a new owner in Ontario claim they have been charged extra months’ rent, and have no clue when they’ll be getting it back.

Both Ashley Moodie and Brad Williams feel they are being taken advantage of by out-of-province owners.

“At this point it was just a letter from Oneka (previous owners) saying that the building was transferred, so there was nothing, who to contact, just basically a numbered company from Ontario,” said Williams.

They say both companies – the former owners and the new ones – have done little to help them.

“You know, the building’s been sold. You’ll be advised what’s going to happen moving forward,” said Moodie, explaining what was in the letter.

Moodie and Williams were given notices that their building was being sold to new ownership. When the new landlord arrived, they were told that if they didn’t set up auto payments, they would be evicted from their homes.

“’We’re the new people that own the building. It’s auto withdrawal only now, so you have to pay us.’ And I was like initially very uncomfortable with this because I already paid my rent,” said Moodie.

Both renters are claiming they were told they needed to pay the January rent to the previous owner due to direct payments not being fully setup.

“First week of January, no rent was taken out. So I was texting this number that I had. Yeah, nothing. They’re working on it. OK, then the message from the landlord basically says, ‘just send it to Oneka and they’ll pass it on to us,’” said Williams.

Fast forward to February, both renters are claiming they were charged double to cover their rent for the two months.

“So they tried to take out two months, the January and February and yeah, basically cost me a $45 fee for the banking for that,” said Williams.

Moodie looked into disputing the payment through the Alberta website and saw it would cost $75. After being down almost $2,400 in rent over two months, she simply didn’t have the resources to dispute the issue.

“I called the residential tenancy place and they said we have to pay $75 for the application fee for your case to be looked at,” she said. “Well, that’s a bit confusing because I’ve already done this and I didn’t pay for it last time. So what’s changed?”

Moodie claims many in the building have gone through the same problem, with these other tenants also concerned the issue may never get resolved.

“From what I’ve found of the new company too, they are just a construction company. Like they’re not a property management company. It just says like a dummy construction. So I don’t know what their intention is with our building,” said Moodie.