Profoundly true … the rate of amateurism in rental management is startlingly high … middle aged couple moves to a small place and rents out the old family home … maybe not even aware there’s laws governing the practice.
Call the city building inspector on Tuesday and report this to them , your landlord will have to get everything fixed in the house isn’t up to code. And check out tenants rights online and see what you can do . Take photos of everything that broken and be sure to date the photo , if you can’t do that with your camera buy a newspaper and put that in the all the photos to show what day they were taken . Your landlord will say that you broke everything and take it out your deposit and take you court if there not enough money to cover the damages. You have a slum landlord and they’re bad news !
Depending on the California jurisdiction, there might not be city building inspectors who inspect residential homes for rent for electrical violations. We don’t know if this jurisdiction even requires a rental permit. As to the last sentence, that’s a conclusion that we can’t make simply from the OP. It might be true, but there’s just as good a chance for other explanations.
Step one is to document the damage and contact the landlord. This should have been done on or near move-in (which, in turn, would allow the landlord to go after the prior tenant if necessary), because if you do have a “slum” landlord, they may try to throw it back at you. If they don’t address real safety issues promptly (electrical especially), THEN get in touch with the city or a lawyer. But be careful when contacting any city agency. If they find a place a safety hazard, you might end up needing to find alternate living arrangements immediately. That might be good or bad, depending on your view.
I was hoping the OP would come back, because the most important question he needs to answer is whether he wants to stay in this unit. If rentals are widely available, then we can move forward in that direction; but if housing tight and in short supply, then packing up and just moving out will not be an option.
I respectfully disagree with your characterization of “just as good a chance for other explanations” as to whether this is a slumlord or not. I’d put the odds closer to 3 to 1 they are. There’s no excuse for a professional landlord to not have already called the OP asking if everything was okay … seriously … there’s a number of things landlords can’t check very easily, like sufficient hot water for two showers in a row.
Do you, the reader, rent? You, yourself, should read the local Landlord/Tenant Law. You’re paying up to one third your income to someone who will not be trying to protect your rights. 3 out of 4 landlords will happily trample your rights for the extra profit. Know your rights, insist upon them … the courts are on your side.
Landlord tenant law is hyper local, no one here can give you meaningful legal advice. I rent out lots of properties (mostly commercial which is different in many ways), but prettt much everywhere your first call on maintenance issues should be the land lord. It’s by far the fastest option, some true slum lords as a matter of business refuse to fix anything, but they also tend to have very low income tenants that get evicted for non-payment of rent after 4-5 months and have no clue they have any legal rights.
I don’t know your situation but assuming this woman isn’t a slum lord you have a reasonable potential of getting things fixed. Usually replacing light bulbs most people would expect as tenants to handle that, they’re very cheap.
Don’t even consider withholding rent unless you do a thorough legal investigation–I operate in several jurisdictions in Virginia and none of them permit tenants to withhold rent, for any reason. I’m familiar with other jurisdictions that allow it of the residence is “uninhabitable” (usually things like the furnace going out in winter.) Here your legal recourse if the landlord is a) genuinely not satisfying terms of the lease and b) out of code, would be to file suit for breach of contract, which if you prevailed could terminate the lease and get you damages. But if you withhold rent for any reason you’re in breach of contract yourself. On code enforcement issues you can report the land lord–which may result in them being punished (but often CE gived a warning and a 24-48 hr window to make corrections before they go further), but it still wouldn’t give you any money or make rent withholding acceptable under the lease.
Some of the stuff you have listed would be code issues here, so any smart land lord would fix them. Some stiff is just “property quality” stuff. I’m allowed to rent a house out with torn window screens or an AC that is undersized or an interior door that isn’t hung right or with trim that’s coming off or less than nice carpet etc. You have no legal right here to decide you’re going to unilaterally make improvements to fixtures and bill me for it by withholding rent.
In fact here, if you were (as an example) to install a ceiling fan, that actually becomes a fixture which I own as the property owner, i.e. it isn’t part of your leasehold. You have no legal contractual right to bill me for it or even to take it with you when you move. We’ve actually had tenants install ceiling fans and leave them–although if someone installed one and removed it when they left I’d not push on them legally since I don’t care.
Virginia is a pretty laissez-faire rental market, with a view toward the relationship primarily being contractual between landlord and tenant, with only minor government regulation of the financial side (there’s strict regulations on building codes.) All this is to say don’t do things like withholding rent unless you know you can. Some heavily regulated markets like in big cities Housing Authoritied allow tenants to withhold rent for a litany of causes, but if you do it incorrectly you’ll either have to pay them back plus potential fees as per the lease or you could even face eviction.
You are correct.
But perhaps he meant Legal Aid, or some similar group.
First, like you said, call. Then write or email, so you have a record.
You can, in many states, make the necessary repairs yourself, and withhold those from the rent. The landlord can often simply evict you then, but not for non-payment of rent.
What states would those be? In my state (Kansas), “repair and deduct” is legally non-payment of rent, and the landlord would be within his rights to begin eviction on that basis.
OP: find out your local laws before you do anything that could imperil your tenancy.
Well, the richest and most populous State, at the very least.
Yep…
- Document all the repair issues. Photos plus written descriptions of the problems, and dates.
- Read your lease. Safety / habitability issues are covered by law, but a number of other things may be covered by the lease agreement.
- Call your landlord and give them a chance to be reasonable. Better, email them if you can, that way you also have it in writing, with a date attached. Either way, document your contact, what you requested, when you contacted them.
You’ll probably end up with some things done and some things not. Our apartment came with a dishwasher when we moved in, and the first time we tried to run it, nothing happened. Landlord replaced it (although with the cheapest one he could find, so it doesn’t always do the job that well and we have to rinse grit off our glasses… it is at least somewhat better than nothing at all). He has never fixed the refrigerator though, which was also a move-in problem (the compressor sounds like a semi truck idling). He also responds immediately if we complain about mice, but will blame us and then ignore us if we complain about roaches. (We’re pretty sure the guy in the garden apartment is the source of the roaches, and they climb up the pipes to the third floor. This will never be resolved without tackling that first, so we pay for our own roach hotels and pray for the day we can afford to move out).
Screens MAY be a safety issue, and you could certainly pitch it that way… at one point we noticed that the frame of one of our window screens was basically flapping in the wind, pulling away from the building, and likely to rip off and fall at any time, possibly hitting someone passing below. If the screens are worn, the frames may be past their prime too, which means falling out and hitting someone could be a liability issue. You could perhaps express concern about such an accident.
There are no universal regulations, sadly. In fact, every time I’ve moved out of an apartment here in Chicago, the landlord outright refused to do an exit inspection with me (in one case, promised to be there then failed to show up; in another, he just said he wasn’t going to), and when I asked for that in writing, got a “yeah yeah” response but no written documentation. In both cases, I did my own documentation, including photos/video of the entire apartment after I cleaned and just before I left, just in case they tried to claim they had reason to withhold my security deposit. In the latter case, two weeks after I’d moved out someone from the old landlord’s office called me about “the smell,” I assume to trick me into saying something was wrong with the way I’d left the place. I didn’t bite and told him that I’d thoroughly cleaned every inch of the place, had video to prove it, and if they had issues the time to bring them up would have been in my presence at a move-out inspection, which they’d declined, so whatever their problem was it was officially Not My Problem. They left me alone after that, and yes I got my deposit back (though of course they waited until the last legal moment to do so).
Yeah, this is quite common everywhere I’ve lived, and it’s always shocked me. One of my first apartments, while empty of dust bunnies, was so filthy when I moved in that walking on the hardwood floors in bare feet turned my feet black. Nasty. You’d like they’d at LEAST like to thoroughly inspect the place so they can withhold repair/cleaning costs from the security deposit, and at least occasionally spring for a professional cleaning with equipment that your average tenant won’t have access to, but laziness abounds. In fact, the most responsible landlord I’ve had was a guy who was managing the house for his mom. All the big management / real estate companies who do this as a for-profit business (so far) couldn’t be arsed.
We don’t know if this is a professional landlord. We don’t know if this is someone on their first rental or their 20th. We don’t know if this is handled by a property management firm or an amateur claiming to be a property manager. That’s why I call it even odds.
Kaio, if they are turning over the apartment in 8 hours (last tenant out at 10 new one in at 6), cleaning crews and walk throughs are tough. They are hoping for the new tenant to document the problems so they can charge the old. It isn’t ideal (understatement), but it’s reality. There’s often a disconnect between the owner and the manager. The owner only notices when the monthly check is low or missed. There is little incentive for the manager to do ant extra work.
Yeah, the first thing to do is to see if there is a property manager. I’d be very nervous renting from someone far enough away so that coming over to see is hard if there were no property manager.
BTW, depending on the city to do anything is going to keep that window broken a long time.
I’d document the problems and ask the landlord which handyman she uses for repairs. That person can bill the landlord directly. If the landlord is unwilling to make repairs, then the OP can look for other options. I’ve done this several times with no problems and no conflict with the landlord.
In neither case was there immediate turn over from me to the new tenant, though. In the first case I was evicted because the building was sold and the new guys were gut rehabbing to sell as condos. (These guys were super shady, and I had to threaten to take them to court to get a non-rubber check for my security deposit back. It is, BTW, illegal to not hold security deposits in escrow in IL.) The second case, as I mentioned, involved the guy from he management company calling me some two weeks after I’d left because he was… I dunno, cleaning or inspecting the apartment at that time. The new tenant clearly hadn’t moved in yet.
Also, I personally feel that unit turnover is just a cost of doing business. Yeah, that means it’s empty for a month so you can clean it thoroughly, make your repairs, and make sure the unit is ready for new tenants. Of course I know the capitalists don’t give a shit and don’t want to spend / “lose” the money, but one SHOULD be putting their best foot forward on a new business relationship, which a tenancy is.
I agree. What should happen and what actually happens are too often very different.
I would document what needs to be fixed and contact the landlord on a cordial basis first unless you want to wage war with the landlord on a continuous basis.
All the items listed are routine problems including the wall outlet. It’s easy for the last tenant to yank a cord out and break the outlet. Happens all the time. Outlets are cheap and easy to fix.
Worst case the landlord tells you the ice maker is not part of the lease and suggests you use ice trays.
Again, landlords in Australia do not have one tenant vacate on one day, and another move in the next. There’s (generally) at least a week that the premises are vacant…and often longer.
That gives the previous tenant time to clean and repair the premises, and time for the landlord to do a ‘vacate condition report’ so that the bond (which is normally the amount of four week’s rent) can be adjusted for damages, or returned in full to the tenant.
It sounds like a hotch-potch of regulations in the US. 
Given that the OP isn’t returning to this thread, I’m wondering how cursory his inspection of the apartment was, not to notice broken windows, inoperable light switches or any of the other problems.
My advice (I am not a lawyer, but I work with a few…)
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Document everything. Get a paper or computer file, and write down everything wrong. Put pictures in the file. If anything changes, take new pictures. If you have a phone call with the landlord (or anyone else) immediately write down who said what (including the time and date of the conversation and the time and date you’re writing it down). If it’s a major conversation with agreements that someone will do something, immediately send an e-mail or letter as a friendly reminder of what everyone agreed to. Even if things never get to court, it could be very helpful.
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As far as lawyers go, it is an extremely bad idea to have a lawyer contact the landlord right off, or even let the landlord know you’re talked to a lawyer. You want to try and resolve things in a friendly way first. That said, it never hurts to know exactly what your legal rights and recourses are, but it may also be a waste of time if the landlord turns out to be cooperative. So, me, I’d probably invest an hour in internet research (hey, you’ve already started that!) then call/e-mail the landlord to find out if she knows about the problems and request some repairs.
Something like changing a light bulb, or tightening a loose screw, I would just do myself and not mention. It’s perfectly fine to offer to do repairs yourself, but don’t be surprised or annoyed if they say no. Another possible arrangement is that the landlord may agree for you to call the plumber/whatever, pay them, and deduct that from your next rent check (sending her the receipt of course), but obviously, landlords tend to me more comfortable with that arrangement with long-term known tenants.
If the landlord refuses to fix things, then you might want to see if there’s free legal advice for renters in your area.