'It changed my life': Tenant inherits property from generous landlord

A Melbourne woman who rented her home for over two decades was shocked when her landlord called to say she can keep it.

Jane Sayner started hunting for a home to rent over 23 years ago and she never dreamed something like this could happen to her.

She spotted a two-bedroom unit with a garden in St Albans, north-west of Melbourne, that looked just perfect and she has no regrets about moving into the neighbourhood.

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Sayner's landlord, John Perrett, is the definition of generous.

Perrett was a community man at heart, a pharmacist, a football player, a property investor and a philanthropist.

Over his 83 years, Perrett amassed a multi-million-dollar fortune.

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Sayner, 74, worked at a market in Epping before her recent retirement.

She said she's still pinching herself.

"(I) still sometimes think, 'did this really happen'?" she said.

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"I got a phone call from him one day and he said, 'I want you to talk to my solicitor, he is here at the moment and can you give him your full name because I'm leaving you the unit'."

By then, Perrett had moved into a nursing home while battling Parkinson's disease.

Perrett donated the bulk of his fortune – $19.6 million of it – to the Royal Melbourne Hospital's nephrology department.

"Words can almost never describe how unselfish and incredibly generous (Perrett is)," Professor Nigel Toussiant from the Royal Melbourne Hospital said.

"We are extremely grateful as a department of the hospital at the Royal Melbourne Hospital for such a bequest. It's just amazing."

Perrett received a kidney transplant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital some three decades ago.

"That kidney transplant lasted 30 plus years and it was still functioning when he passed away in his mid-80s,

"That was a life-saving gift, I guess, to take him off dialysis and he was obviously grateful for the care that he received, for all the doctors and nursing and medical staff to look after him at the Royal Melbourne Hospital," Toussiant said.

Perrett's record donation has been invested by the Royal Melbourne Hospital and is expected to support the hospital and its patients for decades to come.

The hospital also has plans to honour Perrett with commemorative plaques.

Perrett died in September 2020.

He was 86.

As for Sayner, she's now retired and living it up in her garden thanks to Perrett's kindness.

"I thank him still, every day of my life … just privately, I say, 'thanks John'," Sayner said.