The Landlord

As most of you know, Jake and I rent a house. We kinda got stuck renting when we had to move out of the respite house and didn't end up buying the house we were planning to buy. Long story. Either way, if you go back to some of my original posts I think I talked about all that. Well, we didn't have a lot of time to look for a place to rent. We went and "toured" quite a few houses and weren't really satisfied with any of them. We were at our wits end. Then Jake found this great house in Stow. We went and looked at it and really liked it. The best part was the yard. It is an acre sized yard. You just don't get that is Summit County....we were happy. We wrote a check for the full first months rent and security deposit on the spot. Impulsive. The landlord is this little irish woman. She bought the house about 10 years ag0 and has done a lot of work on it. She was so nice and talkative with us. She had been living with this guy "Norm" since she bought the house. In August Norm, who she refers to as "my other half", moved out and in with another woman. She said she wasn't shocked and a little relieved but she couldn't afford the place herself. So, she decided to rent it out. There is a "mother in law suite" on the back and she lives there. We asked her about the utilities and she said we would be paying for them but said she wasn't sure how it would all work out. She said she was thinking about paying for half the water bill. We asked her about the lawn care and snow removal...she said she was going to look into having it hired out. We took her word for it. She had been doing a bunch of work on the house to get it ready to rent. She was having someone put a new brick sidewalk in the front. She had built a new entry way on the front of the house and it was not finished. We moved in (because we had to be out of our other house) and she said the stuff would be finished ASAP. Well....here we are on January 3rd and the work is not done. It is so frustrating. There isn't even a step to our front door. It is dangerous. We have asked us about it several times and she always has an excuse. Also, she has never given us a break on rent or paid any on the utilities. In fact, she had her daughter living with her for a while and told me she would pay the electric bill but never offered anything when it came time to pay the bill. She started avoiding us after Jake left her a letter on November 1 asking her to finish the repairs. So I wrote her an official letter and gave it to her with this month's rent. Here is the letter...

Dear Dawn,
Jake left you a note with November’s rent check concerning a few maintenance issues. He did say you spoke with him briefly but we have not seen the results.

I am including a list of items that need to be addressed and/or corrected.

· We need a step for the front door. It is dangerous for our family and our houseguests.
· The entry way area needs to be finished.
· The floor by the front closet needs to be finished. There are nails sticking out of the floor.
· We need a storm window for the front screen door.

These are all things you told us would be done before we moved in or soon after. We have been patient for 3 months. We also request you remove the ugly buckets of dirt and rotor tiller from the front yard.

If you can not make the repairs we request to break our lease and you return our security deposit to us. We will give you a 30 day notice before moving. Our other option is to begin legally withholding our rent by placing it in a court approved escrow account, until the repairs are made. This is an option that is completely legal.

I would like to also let you know, as a landlord, you need to give us a 24 hour notice before entering our dwelling. If you are going to come into the apartment you need to let us know in advance. We aren’t trying to be jerks about this, we understand this rental situation is unique but you still need to inform us.

We don’t want to have hard feelings, we just want what was promised to us and we need to assure the safety of our family.

Thank you and Happy New Year.

Sincerely,
Jake & Delilah Miller

While we were in Tennesee, she came in our apartment and left a light on. She has not talked to us but today I saw her for the first time in two months (literally). She was moving 5 gallon buckets of dirt (about 10 of them) from the front yard. I smiled and said Hi. She turned her back to me. Nice. Did she think we were just going to ignore that the work was not done? I know she probably thought I was harsh in the letter but I think it would have been nastier to just call the building inspector. Either way, I think the whole situation stinks. I hate renting and just want to buy a house. If someone wants to give us a house please let me know.

Have a good day.