My Landlord/Realtor Dilemma...
Well, my landlord has decided to sell the house that I live in now. Her mother owned it and recently passed away and I guess she and her brother have decided to sell the 2 family that they grew up in and that I currently live in. I don't really care what they do with it since Collin and I are moving to PA in 2 weeks anyway...
BUT, I came home yesterday to a note from the landlord saying that they were selling the house and to expect calls from people looking to view the house. Fine, no problem I thought, a call once or twice a week to give advance notice that a buyer wants to come, no biggie...
I come home tonight to a For Sale sign in the yard and a lockbox on the porch railing...still, no big deal! I came inside and checked the blinking voice mail....6 messages from realtors who want to show the house TOMORROW!!
B I G P R O B L E M!!!! Am I supposed to arrange these visits? When did I become the secretary for the landlord!?!?! *ANGRY ME!!*
OK, so I listen to the messages...one lady says "Oh, I would like to come tomorrow around 4 and you will need to put the DOG IN A CAGE."
OK, now I'm seeing RED...I thought I was angry before!!! I quick called my dad to find out how much he knows about my rights as a tenant and what he thinks I should do...I mean, I don't want to be uncooperative, they want to sell the house and I want to be accomodating. But I draw the line at putting Duncan in a crate so people can come to the house when I am not home!
First of all, Duncan has not been crated since he was a year old. And even then it was for 4 hours, I let him out at lunchtime, 4 more hours and then I was home...and that was only for a few weeks until he learned to behave in the house when noone was home (Don't get me wrong, I am not against crating a dog for behavior, training, etc. so I don't want to start any trouble;)) I just do NOT think that it is fair for Duncan, who lives here too, this is his home as much as it is mine or Collin's!, to be in a crate all day so people can come look at the place. With traffic, my work is about 30 - 40 minutes away so I couldn't come home at lunch and he would be in the crate for 11 hours straight! And even if I WOULD do that, what good is that? The people may be safe from Duncan biting him but he would bark and growl at them and jump around the crate and could injure himself! I don't care about the safety of these people to be honest...but I care a great deal about the safety of my dog! Not to mention that it has been in the 90s everyday here and, I do have AC but just a room/window one so it's cool but not always comfortable. Poor Duncan wouldn't be able to find a cool spot to lay or stretch out, I don't have a water hanger thing and even if I did, I don't think Duncan would know how to use it....
Now, I could leave him loose in the house everyday like I normally do and just take my chances that he will not bite these strangers coming into my house. And, to be honest, he probably wouldn't. He's not overly concerned with the house itself, it's the people living in it (translation: ME :)) that he is concerned about and will protect until his dying day.... So, theoretically, if I'm not here, he would probably be fine...but can I take that chance? NO, I can't. What if he does bite someone....then his life is at risk when they report it and I just cannot have that.
So I called some of the people back today and told them not to come into my house between the hours of 8am and 7pm. Some already had made "appts" for tomorrow!!!! I told them no nicely and tried to make it sound like I was concerned with their safety and that I was willing to help but only after work hours...One man decided to come right then so I took Duncan for a walk, which is fine. We usually take long walks in the evening anyway but lately we have been waiting until it cools off.
My concern is that, since there is a lockbox out front and I have no idea if the key to this apartment is in it or just the key to the downstairs one (they only have pet birds), that people will come in when I am not home anyway!!
I think I will put a nice note on the front door asking them to please not come in, the dog is not friendly, (I'm sure they can hear him barking at them when they are on the porch anyway...)I don't know how to word it without seeming like I don't want to help though. Of course I would prefer not to have people in my home at any time but if I have to I will deal with it. But what are my rights? Can I forbid them to enter when I am not home? And if they do anyway and Duncan does hurt someone, what will happen to him? And can I be sued? And what if he gets out of the apartment? As it is, it seems like I will have to have people tromping through my apt when I get home from work for a few hours. I can take Duncan to the park to swim and play (it's a 45 minute drive but we'll both have fun) but it still sucks. (Tonight, I had to turn off my dinner and finish cooking it when I returned) Also, the place is a mess since Duncan and I have been living here alone for 2 months, I see no reason to dust:D and I have been packing so there are boxes and bags everywhere! And to top it ALL off, I have to give my notice at my job, which I love! and I am not looking forward to that. I had planned on working lots of OT to help them set up a training program for the person they hire to replace me since my job was a new position and does not have an official "description" I like my company and love the girls I work with so I wanted to get as much done as possible to make it easier on them. And now I have to commit to being home every night at a certain time and leaving WITH Duncan!! That can be a problem in 90 degree weather when I need to run errands which I have TONS of since I am moving in 2 weeks....So, you can understand my dilemma.....
Sorry this is so long!! I am just so frustrated and confused...
Does anyone know my rights/obligations in a situation like this? In all honesty, the landlord has never been nice and had BARELY fulfilled her obligations as a landlord(another LONG story;)) but at the same time, I understand the position she is in and certainly don't want to derail her plans....
Please help!! Any advice would be wonderful...Again, I apologize for the length....any comments/stories would be welcome...
The Landlord Strikes Again!!
I swear, sometimes I feel like my life is just one big series of calamities!! LOL!!
Now, my former landlord is refusing to return our security deposit! According to the lease, she had 4 weeks from the date we moved out to return it to us. That would have been 7/28. I figured I would go with July 1st as the "start" date of that 4 weeks however since technically we did not have to be out before then. So August 1st, the security deposit should have been in our mailbox. Nothing! We were in Jersey 2 weeks ago and I drove by the old homestead and saw a sold sign in the yard. I was trying to be generous and thought, "Oh, maybe she is just waiting for the closing...."
I called her on 8/5 and left a very nice message oh her home answering machine wondering if the check was lost in the mail, we never received it, giving her our address in PA AGAIN! No response. So I called her at her home number again yesterday. This time no machine picked up at all so I had no choice, I called her at work. I don't like doing that because I know it's difficult to discuss personal business at your workplace but I didn't have a choice. Again, I was very very nice to her on the phone. SHE however, was her usual rude self. She told me I needed to talk to her brother as "she no longer deals with that stuff." (Her mother owned the house and was actually our landlord. Roseanne was the "contact" person. Her mother passed away in March so we started making the checks out to Roseanne at her request. Her brother is not on the lease, nor have I ever met him, I only know his first name is Paul.) She tells me that he will call me in a little while. I asked for his number and hung up. I waited about 10 minutes and he didn't call so I called him. He said that there were "damages" to the apt. I was flabbergasted!!!!! (You don't get to use that word very often and it's a funny one!! ;))
He said there was "dog mess"? in the corner, the rugs were "urine stained" and there was mold growing through the floor due to the shower leaking because we didn't have enough shower curtains up.
Even typing it makes me angry again!! What rubbish! First of all, Duncan has not gone to the bathroom in the house since he was 6months old and even then he was housebroken within 2 weeks. He is excellent at that. He would never do such a thing unless I left him alone for days, which of course, I would never do!! The rugs...when we moved in, there were 4 filthy durty stained rugs in the apt. We asked the landlord if we could dispose of them since they were so gross and we prefered the hardwoods underneath. She said, "sure, they belonged to the previous tenant, do whatever you want with them." We promptly tossed the 2 in the LR and DR but kept the area rugs in the bedrooms. They were filthy and nasty too but the rooms were very small and our furniture covered 90% of them anyway. I put down some throw rugs on top of the rug. So yes, the rugs were dirty...but certainly not because of us!! What do they think, Duncan crawled under the bed to do his business?! NO WAY! It's preposterous! Anyway, the rugs were garbage! We had told our movers to throw them out, but admittedly, I did not see them do so as I had to keep Duncan away from them so we were outside most of the time. I did go in and sweep up the living room and dining room before we left. I had scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom with Clorox the day before.
The mold: yes, there was mold....!!! I noticed it about a month or so before we moved out. My computer desk sat against that wall so it covered it but when I was packing, I moved it and saw this nasty stuff growing up from the floorboards. Now, when we moved in, the floor had water damage already. You could see where the floor was stained and darker in that corner. The tub sat on the opposite side of the wall. It was one of the clawfoot tubs, caulked to the wall on one side. We had 2 shower curtains up the whole time we lived there. At the end of May, after the plumber had to come and fix our leaky sink and our leaky toilet, he came back the next day to check the shower. he told me to put up ANOTHER shower curtain along the wall. I went out that same night, bought one and the hooks and hung it up. NOW, this brother is telling me that we didn't have enough curtains up and it is OUR fault that the floor is damaged! Are these people insane!?? They act like it's MY house and MY responsibility that it is falling down! We would have problems with stuff, like the bathroom that I described above, the front door lock was broken, the living room ceiling leaked when it rained, the bedroom ceiling COLLAPSED on me while I was sleeping!!! The whole thing fell onto the bed!! We would call her and she wouldn't do a d*mn thing. The only way I got her to fix anything at all was to withhold rent finally! It was absolute h*ll living there, it really was. Between all these problems, the super expensive oil furnace from the early 1900s that heated the basement great, the realtors...I mean, seriously!!
I CANNOT believe that they are even attempting to keep the security deposit! And it's not a couple hundred bucks either! IT'S $1,612.50!! That's ALOT of money! SO the brother told me he would call me back and I have yet to hear from him. Tomorrow I am sending a demand letter certified return receipt and filing in small claims court. I have to go to the library to download the forms since this computer just can't handle it! ;) According to NJ law, if the landlord doesn't provide you with an itemized list or the $ in 30 days, a tenant is entitled to sue for DOUBLE the amount of the security deposit! So that is what I am going to do. Actually, I'm going to sue for $3000 because any more than that and we will need a lawyer and I don't think we want to go that route yet unless we have too. With me not working, we don't have alot of disposable income right now so that may be an expense we can't afford right now. Although when we win, she will have to pay that too. :) I am not sure they are aware of the law since they showed blatant disregard for it. I'm excited to sue her actually. I know we are right and did absolutely no damage to that place!! In fact, it was cleaner when we left than when we moved in! It took us 3 days to clean it when we first moved in at the end of December! There was all sorts of garbage and random furniture and tools left in the place. There wasn't even a window in the bedroom! Just a piece of cardboard! (They fixed it a few days later BUT it was supposed to be done before we moved in. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of the apt on the day we moved in...:( But I do have pictures of all the problems we dealt with and some pictures of the day we left.
What a pain though! Especially since we will have to drive 4 hours back to Jersey to deal with it...and I'm sure it will be ugly. She has never been nice to us and she has a very strange sense of responsibility about the apartment. She always acted like it was our house and our problem, not hers....I had to remind her that we RENTED the apt, not owned it and the care of it was HER problem, not mine...
I will let y'all know how it goes!! Wish me luck! ;)
