But nothing was done and the carpet became soaked in a room the family used for storage and their belongings were getting wet.
Mould had started to grow on the belongings by the time property manager Claire McLachlan visited the address to perform a house inspection on March 15.
"I kept calling them because the room wasn't drying out. They just weren't fixing things properly," Gibb said.
"They told us to buy a dehumidifier to try to dry the room out and to open windows, which we were doing anyway."
Gibb said it was a frustrating time.
"We had to live in the house knowing there were problems with it. There were problems with the hot water too," she said.
After the couple noticed a hole starting to form in the floor in the lounge the couple had to issue a 14-day notice for it to be fixed.
The notice was issued on February 11 this year but it wasn't until March 18 that a tradesperson went to the house.
The condition of the house had got so bad the only solution was to remove all the timber including the kitchen and install a vapour barrier.
Gibb said the black mould was a health issue.
"We weren't allowed to stay in that house anymore, so we stayed in motels for two weeks before we were able to move into a different house."
Ray White paid the bills, but Gibb and McLelland felt like that would not last and felt forced to move into a new property Ray White offered them.
Gibb said going to the Tenancy Tribunal was a difficult decision because they still rented from Ray White and McLachlan was still their property manager.
But they felt they had been inconvenienced and were out of pocket.
The Tenancy Tribunal found that Ray White had committed an unlawful act in failing to maintain the premises in a reasonable state of repair.
Gibb and McLelland were awarded rent credit, compensation, damages and funds for breach of quiet enjoyment, truck hire and a pet motel for a total of $3,735.44.
Ray White Wanganui general manager Philippa Ivory said they had done the right thing in sending a plumber to fix the flooding issue, but failed to follow up.
"Our oversight is not getting back there quickly enough and making an assumption about it being damp and drying out, rather than another area of concern," she said.
"We put our hand up, the landlords put their hand up and said that they also should have acted sooner, because we are acting on behalf of the landlord.
"They have to approve certain expenditure as well. So we've worked with them too, to make sure that doesn't happen again."
Ivory said that by coincidence, following many staff changes with people moving out of Whanganui, Ray White are currently working through all of their processes.
"We've replaced both the general manager and the property management team manager," she said.
"There probably wasn't enough training there I would say and also the software systems let everybody down."
