We rent an apartment in Melbourne. Since mid-September one of our 3 x AC units in the apartment has been down. At this stage, we notified our landlord for it to be repaired, conscious of the upcoming warmer months.

The AC unit in question is in the main living / dining area of the house, so is a significant area of the apartment that does not have AC (roughly >50%).

We followed up multiple times with the real estate agent to check when they could arrange someone to look at it, but had little success in a response.

Finally in December we had a call out from an AC technician who identified a problem and ordered a replacement part for the unit.

Fast forward to last week when they made another call out to fix the unit this time. While trying to fix the one AC unit, they ended up outing ALL THREE units, leaving us without working AC since.

This is obviously a huge issue now as we enter summer (albeit Victorian summer) with the temperature at the weekend hitting mid-30s, rendering it borderline uninhabitable as we’re relatively high up in an apartment complex. It’s been extremely tricky to sleep in the warm conditions without AC and dangerous for our dog as well.

Latest twist: The AC company came out today again to try to fix but were unsuccessful and have suggested there may not be a fix for a while.

It’s now been 4 months since the issue was first raised with the landlord, and we’re extremely frustrated we are now in summer without any aircon - when this was a big pull factor in the first place in securing the apartment.

Where do we stand in terms of legal rights? Should we seek compensation from the REA?

tldr; AC broken for 4 months without repair due to REA lack of action. Now in almost uninhabitable apartment in summer.