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SINGAPORE, Oct 11 \u2014 An American man living in Singapore refused to pay rent for a semi-detached property he rented in Kembangan, yet sued its elderly owners when they attempted to re-enter the house.<\/p>\n
According to a judgement from Oct 5, the applications made by Anthony Thomas Price were dismissed by District Judge Chiah Kok Khun who said he had \u201cdevised a deliberate scheme\u201d to rent the home without intending to pay rent.<\/p>\n
The tenancy agreement was made by Price using a Singapore-incorporated private company with paid-up capital of only S$200 (RM638), with himself and his family as directors.<\/p>\n
The company was also the applicant of the claim.<\/p>\n
Chiah argued that Price had a pattern of \u201cusing shell companies to rent landed properties in Singapore for his family to stay and not paying rent\u201d and embroiling defendants in litigation \u201cin a bid to extend his period of unlawful occupation\u201d of the homes he rented.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my view, the claimant\u2019s applications are filed in plain abuse of process of the court,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The counterclaim the elderly homeowners in their 80s made against Price was also allowed.<\/p>\n
\u2018Plain breach\u2019 of tenancy agreement<\/strong><\/p>\n According to the judgement, a tenancy agreement was signed in April for two years, from May 1, 2026 to April 30, 2028, with rent of S$7,500 to be paid on the first day of each month.<\/p>\n If rent remained unpaid for seven days, an interest rate of 10 per cent per annum applied, calculated from the due date to the date of actual payment.<\/p>\n Price had only paid rent for the first month.<\/p>\n Thus, the district judge concluded that Price was in \u201cclear breach of the tenancy agreement \u2026 in refusing to pay rent\u201d.<\/p>\n This also gave the defendants, the elderly homeowners, the \u201crights of re-entry\u201d to take back their property.<\/p>\n On top of this, Price breached further tenancy agreements when he paid only half the security deposit of S$15,000 when he moved in and refused to pay the remainder due on June 1.<\/p>\n Price and his family also refused to set up an account and pay for utilities, which they were obliged to in their tenancy agreement, and installed CCTV cameras without obtaining the landlords\u2019 written consent, going against the tenancy agreement.<\/p>\n Price had attempted to justify his refusal to pay rent based on alleged defects to the property, involving \u201capproximately 35 repair, rectification or practical occupation issues\u201d.<\/p>\n He claimed that it was \u201cnot a straightforward rent-only matter\u201d and disputed the homeowners\u2019 entitlement to \u201crely on [claimant\u2019s failure to pay rent and other sums] to take possession by self-help, particularly in the context of the unresolved repair, safety, tenantability and quiet enjoyment issues\u201d.<\/p>\n But Chiah dismissed these, calling them \u201cworthless words and a roundabout way\u201d to say Price refused to pay rent.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the claimant is serious about its assertions regarding the condition of the premises, it is for the claimant to pursue its assertions separately against the defendants,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIt cannot use these assertions as an excuse not to pay rent.\u201d<\/p>\n Defendants \u2018fully entitled to their counterclaim\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The homeowners made an attempt \u201cat peaceful re-entry\u201d into the Kembangan home on June 29, but were resisted by Price and his family.<\/p>\n However, Chiah concluded that, in view of the claimant\u2019s refusal to pay rent, the tenancy agreements give the homeowners \u201ca contractual right to re-enter the premises and terminate the lease\u201d.<\/p>\n He also allowed their counterclaim on basis of arrears of rent \u2014 S$22,500 between June and August and an interest of S$269.17\u2014 and the remaining S$7,500 of the security deposit, as well as $813.74 for utilities.<\/p>\n In addition, Chiah said: \u201cThe claimant is to reimburse the defendants in respect of any unexpired part of the tenancy, a proportionate part of the commission of S$8,175 that was paid by the defendants to the estate agent.\u201d<\/p>\n He also allowed the defendants to claim double rent, calculated from Aug 15 until Price and his family hands over the vacant home.<\/p>\n Chiah ordered a fixed cost of S$15,000 plus disbursements of S$2,031.98 to be paid by the claimant to the defendants as well.<\/p>\n Not the only time<\/strong><\/p>\n Price had used shell companies twice before to attempt to live in landed properties without paying rent.<\/p>\n In 2019, he had used the same shell company that signed the tenancy agreement for the Kembangan property, to rent a landed property at Jalan Selamat.<\/p>\n He also used a wholly-owned subsidiary of his shell company to enter a one-year tenancy agreement with the owner of a landed property at Burnfoot Terrace in 2024.<\/p>\n In both cases, he only paid part of the security deposit and stopped paying rent after a few months, and the owners of both properties had taken him to court over it.<\/p>\n Price and his family had lived in the Jalan Selamat property for at least five months, and at the Burnfoot Terrace home for nearly a year.<\/p>\n While the case regarding the Jalan Selamat home was eventually settled, the proceedings for the Burnfoot Terrace property are still ongoing. \u2014 AsiaOne<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n SINGAPORE, Oct 11 \u2014 An American man living in Singapore refused to pay rent for a semi-detached property he rented in Kembangan, yet sued its…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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