Unfinished Repairs, lease renewal
By FedUpinNY
Long story short: We’ve been renting a house for two years. It’s in a desirable neighborhood and a good school district. The condition of the property was well disguised when we first moved in, and has been steadily deteriorating. My main issues — which have gone unaddressed for the 2 year tenancy — are: a leaking skylight with crumbling plaster and mold growth, a bathroom with tiles falling off, showing crumbling plaster behind it and sometimes leaking down over the front door. The moisture problems caused a carpenter ant infestation, which we did hire an exterminator to deal with, and she did pay for. The fireplace, which was advertised as usable, and verified as such by the landlord when I inquired about the property, was shown to be unsafe when we had it inspected and unusable. Moreover, the inspector commented that the furnace flue was uncapped and could be dangerous if things fell into the flue and blocked the escape of C02.
There are many, many other “minor” repair issues we’ve chosen to ignore.
My question is this: the lease is due at the end of October. We have two small children, one of whom just started school, and we really, really do not want to move. However, we pay a lot of rent ($1250) and I feel it’s unfair for us to continue to pay this amount with the amount of neglect. I want either the repairs fixed or the rent reduced considerably. Do we have any recourse if she says, “No, if you don’t like it, move?”
Edited on: Thursday, September 4th, 2008 6:43 am
6 Responses to “Unfinished Repairs, lease renewal”
Scott September 4th, 2008 6:08 am |
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Yes, |
BlueRENT September 4th, 2008 6:13 am |
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Scott — that was awesome advice! |
Scott September 4th, 2008 6:21 am |
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Thanks RentBLUE! |
Agent Henderson September 4th, 2008 6:47 am |
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Problems with landlord repairs is the second most popular complaint received and mediated by the RPA, next to deposit problems. This should be something you can get resolved without the need for mediation, hopefully. Yes, the rental industry is in a weird spot. Some areas there are hardly any rentals available, but we have also seen areas that have a lot of vacancies of larger homes. (3 or more bedrooms) Follow the advice given here and you should be just fine. Keep the focus on maintaining a good relationship with the landlord. When presenting the repairs try using the sandwhich method. Good News | Bad News | Good News (That basically means you surround the negative stuff with positive.) In other words try something like this: |
Scott September 4th, 2008 6:53 am |
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Good luck to you FedUpinNY! |
FedUpinNY September 4th, 2008 6:31 am |
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Thank you for your advice. I had planned to express that we do want to stay, and I only wanted the serious things fixed, as well as things that we advertised as part of the house (working fireplace, second bathroom). We agreed to the rent thinking those things came with it. Just for perspective, we are in one of the few areas of the country that has very low housing prices and didn’t experience as much of a bubble burst as the rest of the country. There are a lot of comparable rentals available now. This house sat vacant for most of the five years before we moved in; presumably, other prospective renters were not as easily duped as we were regarding the rent versus the actual condition of the property. (The landlord is not local.) |
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