Parents please help - Problems with landlord

younghoss
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:43:54 +0000

SOad is in a jam to be sure. Sadly, Soad has chosen to put herself in the jam. It is terribly terribly foolish to look at a rental unit, see its a mess, and rent it anyway. Worse still to complain about it later. If you tell the judge “we moved in the apartment was absolutely disgusting, like its never been cleaned” any judge is going to think “Hey if it was ok for you to move in, why is it all of a sudden too bad?” and “If it was so disgusting, why did you move in?” And it is reasonable for a judge to be skeptical. Tenant is going to have an EXTREMELY hard time proving what filth was there already compared to any filth tenant may have added and left behind. Pictures need to be “dated”. A tenant’s defense of “it was like that already” is usually laughed at by the judge, in my experience, unless a tenant can document his statement. It is difficult to prove that a wonderfully clean tenant chose to move into a disgusting rental. The very statement defies basic reasoning and makes one skeptical. Yes, it can be true, but very hard to document.
SOad was also foolish to accept a lease clause that might obligate her to pay heat bill when she doesn’t have control of thermostat. Is that fair? YES. Why? You saw the unit, you were told about the heat, you could have looked for thermostat, you could have asked about thermostat/control, but you didn’t. You accepted the terms. Is it common? No. But is it fair? Oh yes. Not liking it now does not suddenly make it unfair. You can’t buy a new car without asking the price first, then a yr into loan payments say it isn’t fair because you didn’t know the price.

So in this case, naturally, I don’t know enough to say evil landlord or uncaring landlord or tenant change of heart. What I do know is tenant knew and accepted most all of the problems in advance of taking posession, yet still chose to take posession. Not saying that course of action makes tenant evil either; just saying it puts tenant in very tough position if tenant has to explain/show why such a bad unit was OK when they took posession, but it isn’t ok now. Most of the problems Soad is describing are self-inflicted and could have been avoided. You cannot choose to look the other way and then later claim “I didn’t know!”.
Seek atty advice, and document ALL correspondence to landlord in writing, take pics with that day’s newspaper beside subject to document when pic was taken. Your pics show you did a nice job cleaning, but that by itself doesn’t affect your sec dep. It is always best to get legal advice from an atty. Even if you pay $100 for a brief consultation, it’s worth it to get a $1200 deposit back. Do only written communication, and keep a copy for yourself. Protect yourself in case this goes to court. There are specific ways to withhold rent for repairs in Ohio, and probably in your state too. If you choose that course of action, be sure you follow the law exactly, or you just look like a deadbeat not paying. You don’t want to give that impression.