NSW Living in Shared House - Ask Co-tenant's Friend to Leave?

[max3369]

My co-tenant has a friend that has recently become a major disturbance for me.

I've lived in the house with the co-tenant for over a year without problems. His friend has been a frequent visitor since I moved in (occasionally stays overnight but visits nearly daily for several hours)

Within the last 2-3 months however I started to actually build more than just a superficial "friend of a friend" relationship with him and unintentionally discovered that he's some sort of covert narcissist. Basically he does some pretty morbid things in his personal life and even at our house and will pathologically lie about all of it.

Eg.
- for several months he was breaking into our house while we weren't home so that he had somewhere to smoke. I actually did notice a small amount of money go missing from my room (over several months about $40)
- after I discovered he was breaking in through the window and confronted him and the co-tenant (separately). My co-tenant says he knew about it and his "friend" just tried to lie about it (I had more than sufficient evidence to run him on a merry-go-round of minimal admissions to breaking in through our window because I kept revealing how I knew he was lying, although he put the foot down at having cut his own key to our property -> next point
- my co-tenant's brother shares with us (no problem with this) but he gave his key to the "friend" under the pretext that the "friend" left something in the house and would immediately return it. Since this coincided with me taking measures to secure the windows I'm pretty sure he just lied to the gullible brother so he could cut the key. He had since been caught in the house while no one was home, all doors locked and all windows secured from outside entry.
- he is just generally a nuisance (uses our utilities way too much without ever paying for them or even being given permission - I also banned him from the internet but I'm pretty sure the co-tenant or his brother are secretly sharing it with him. He has also been caught hacking our network with his own packet sniffer and was probably doing this for months while he had trusted access. I also suspect he's hacked one of my email accounts but that's something I can't prove, too (an email I read was tagged unread and the connection is unsecured -- since he was packet-sniffing he could easily have obtained the password).

As much as I can't really prove most of this, I think this is cause for any reasonable person to consider their rights/ privacy /etc. sufficiently violated but I'm not sure what my rights are as far as a co-tenant to tell another co-tenant I flat-out don't want his friend anywhere near the house any more. Or does any co-tenant basically have the right to refuse bad guests invited by co-tenants?

I'm basically at the point where I've realised I shouldn't need to be worrying about these things and / or taking such restrictive measures to secure my personal property in a shared house. Its obviously prudent to take care of security but against people that don't even live on the property? Surely I can tell him with authority under Property Law to leave and not return?

 

[max3369]

I'm also doubly concerned that, because he's a covert narcissist, any action I take against him that doesn't involve a complete restriction from our property could also lead to retribution (narcissistic injury / rage)

My understanding of his character is that he's too afraid of losing the esteem of my co-tenant to do anything too serious, and as I'm physically larger than him he's afraid of a physical confrontation (when I confronted him about breaking in to the house etc. he did try to intimidate me with threats of violence but he backed down fast enough that I don't think he'd ever go there -- damaging my property or something while I'm out of the house, however, does seem perfectly within his character)

 

[Ivy]

Hi Max,

One of the terms of a lease (written or implied) is that you have exclusive possession of the property along with co-tenants. This means that you are within your rights to ask this person to leave and never return. Although you should probably tell your flatmate first that you will be doing this.

Secondly, all three of you may have breached your lease (because you would probably be jointly and severally liable) by allowing this person to cut a key. The allowing has happened by lending them the key and thus arming them with the means to access the property.

So if you make your case to your co-tenant and they still want the person to be able to come around, you can tell your co-tenant that you will be taking the matter up with the real estate agent/ landlord. Landlords are usually pretty concerned if they think people are staying at the house frequently that aren't on the lease.