For more than two decades, Jane Sayner paid $200 per week for the home she was renting from an elderly multimillionaire in Australia.
Crushed when her landlord, and friend, died in 2020, Sayner, a 76-year-old cancer survivor, feared she’d have to move, which meant burdening her ailing older body with continued work.
But the kind-hearted man, known for his generosity, wasn’t going to leave one of his favorite tenants troubled.
Keep reading to find out what this landlord did for the Aussie senior!
In 1998, Jane Sayner, now 76, moved into the Melbourne home, one of the many properties belonging to the multimillionaire pharmacist John Perrett.
Sayner, who retired at 74 after 25 years of work at a wholesale fruit and vegetables company, moved from the Melbourne’s Sunshine into her perfect rental house in the suburb of St. Albans.
“I looked at so many places, but this one appealed to me, and I was lucky enough to get it. Best thing that ever happened,” Sayner said. “I [treat] this place like it was my own. When I first came here there was no garden out the back. Because I was living here, I planted lots of plants and flowers, which are still here today.”
Over time, the Aussie forged a friendship with the elderly man, who was impressed by what she had done to his property. “When he saw what I’d done, he brought over some old, big pots that his father had had that he didn’t use, that I could plant things in.”
An old school businessman, Perrett expected the $200 weekly rent to be handed over in person, which gave the two time for conversation.
“We’d talk for an hour or so because he used to be by himself all the time. We talked about everything. His father, his life as a chemist in St Albans.” Sayner continued, “When he was getting on a bit and was starting to find it hard to cook for himself, I took him to buy a roast, things like that.”
Despite his incredible wealth, Perrett was very humble and preferred to live a simple life, void of extravagance.
“He had an old television. It took me four years to talk him into replacing that with a new one so he could actually see the picture and it didn’t hum anymore,” Sayner shared.
The man, who never married and was an only child, had been sick for several decades, and was leaving the majority of his fortune to Melbourne Hospital, where he had a life-saving kidney transplant three decades before.
“For the whole time that he was my landlord, he’d always said that all of his money was going to the Royal Melbourne Hospital,” the woman shared.
Perrett, who had Parkinson’s, spent his final years in a nursing home and one of the few friends that shared her time with him, was the woman who rented his house.
“I used to call in at least once a week on my way home from work. I know what it’s like for people in those places. You don’t get a lot of visitors and it’s not much fun,” said Sayner, who divorced once and has no children of her own.
Meanwhile, the single woman was dealing with her own health issues.
In 2021, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer and had major surgery in December of that same year, when the tumor was successfully removed.
Though her old company told her she could return to work, her aging body was unforgiving and slowed her down.
And if it weren’t for a gift from Perrett, she would have been forced back to work, with more years of a 3 a.m. wakeup time.
Six months before Perrett died, she received a phone call that completely changed her life.
“Then one day [Perrett] just rang me and said, ‘My solicitor’s here, can you please give me your full name, because I’m leaving you your unit,’” Sayner shared. “I thought I hadn’t heard it right. Surely not. For the whole time I had known him, [leaving all his money to charity] was always what he was going to do.”
Perrett, 86, died in September 2020, and the hospital received $18.6 million, its largest single donation ever. Sayner became a new homeowner, and other beneficiaries included another long-term tenant who also inherited a unit, and a handyman who had worked for him.
If it weren’t for Perrett’s generosity, Sayner says, “I would still have been working, I suppose.”
“But I wouldn’t have been living here, though, that’s the whole thing. It would have been sold and the proceeds would have gone to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, which was what happened with (almost) everything else.” She continued, “So who knows where I would have been or what circumstances I would have been in. [The house] was life changing, it’s just been fantastic.”
Today, Sayner is living comfortably with her pension and a cozy home: “What more could you want?”
John Perrett lived such a blessed life and it’s great to hear that he was so generous in blessing the lives of others.
We wish Jane Sayner many more happy decades in her home!
If you enjoyed reading about Perrett and his generous gifts after his death, you’ll really like the story about the dog who inherited millions from his person!
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