After 23 years renting the same home, Jane Sayner received an extraordinary gift from her landlord: the property itself.
Sayner’s story was reported in Australia in 2022, after the death of John Perrett, the Melbourne pharmacist and investor who owned the St Albans unit.
A home became an inheritance
Contemporary reporting by realestate.com.au described a two-bedroom unit with a garden and a longstanding, friendly relationship between tenant and landlord.
Perrett died in 2020. The report said Sayner learned of his intention to leave her the home through a call before his death, and later became its owner through the inheritance.
The distinction matters because some retellings describe a property transfer completed while he was alive. The documented story centers on a bequest.
Security after years of work
Sayner had worked at a fruit and vegetable market. The property gave her housing security and helped make retirement possible, according to the 2022 report.
It also described Perrett’s much larger gift to Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he had received a kidney transplant, and another property left to another tenant.
The story is therefore part of a broader pattern of giving, rather than evidence of a formal arrangement under which paying rent earns a tenant ownership.
A contemporary account in am730 also described the friendly relationship and Sayner’s care for the garden.
What changed her circumstances was a particular landlord’s personal decision. For Sayner, its effect was concrete: a familiar place to live became a home she could keep without facing another search for an affordable rental.