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I actually could use some advice on this, I think. In a 4-person household, two are leaving, and I'm taking over responsibility for paying the rent and utilities. The remaining roommate I get along with well, though it does mean I have to put up with a lot of kitchen messes. The people moving in, however, are unknowns. The last person in charge of paying rent was a shut-in who didn't have any rules for literally anything, except "pay rent and utilities when I give the total i guess." (I needed a place on short notice okay) Atmosphere around him has always been kind of uncomfortable and awkward, and I'm tired of that poo poo. The last thing I want is a household where people can't stand each other. After one of the new roommates moves in tomorrow, I'm planning on having a little meeting where we can agree on a few rules, but I also wanted to ask people in the thread who've been in this situation: What have you done in the past that made a household work?
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Mar 6, 2017 18:33
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:I actually could use some advice on this, I think. In a 4-person household, two are leaving, and I'm taking over responsibility for paying the rent and utilities. The remaining roommate I get along with well, though it does mean I have to put up with a lot of kitchen messes. Assuming you find that not everyone is onboard for the responsible thing balance, i found great success with the rotating whiteboard of House Things. (Also works with google sheets if you are all tech savvy) Whiteboard lists each roommate, portion of the rent, portion of the utilities, and which House chores are on rotation (week/two weeks). Ideally, you all settle on terms IE: Rent is due on the 1st. I'll pay it, all rent is due to me by the 28th. X util is due Y date, your portion is due 3 days ahead. if you have any temperamental cookware, now would be a good time to mention it (IE: Cast iron vs "I like to let things soak.") Also, air out any "do you have any smells you hate?" prevents candle/cooking/air freshener anger. Are you a clean person (things are clean, but may be messy/cluttered scattered around) or are you a neat person (things look neat and organized, but not actually clean)? Do you all have normal/matching shifts or will you have to double check the clock before watching that show saturday morning? Do you use the dishwasher or hand wash as you use things? IF you all used the dishwasher, will it get run more than 2x a week? toplitzin fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 21:17
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Supposed to be moving next week and my new job is paying for movers, though they chose the company (Graebel). Been working with them the last three weeks and as late as this Monday with them coming out to survey, set dates, etc. Though at the end of last week my coordinator "was no longer with the company" and I started working with a new lady who kept telling me she was going to do stuff, but progress had effectively stopped. Then they just stopped answering phones yesterday. No one returning phone calls or answering emails. Now I just got a call from them saying "we're going out of business, so you should find someone else" Go gently caress yourselves with what little time you have left, Graebel Van Lines. Thank you; had to vent.
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Mar 15, 2017 22:18
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gently caress man, I'm sorry to hear it. Hope you're able to get other arrangements made in time. I had to find an alternate moving company on short notice at one point, and didn't notice at the time that their company name had "& Ministries" at the end. They actually did a pretty good job, though they really wanted to tell me about Jesus while they were doing it. 
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Mar 15, 2017 23:35
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:gently caress man, I'm sorry to hear it. Hope you're able to get other arrangements made in time. Thankfully when I told my new employer they were like WHAT and had me on the phone with a new company in 20 min (I was very impressed). At this point it's just getting that lined up again which hopefully shouldn't be a huge chore. Employer understands and is flexible on starting dates. I'm just more mad that Graebel jerked me around for days when the knew this poo poo was coming down. Maybe I'll have an opportunity for more jesus in my life too 
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Mar 16, 2017 02:13
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DrPossum posted:Thankfully when I told my new employer they were like WHAT and had me on the phone with a new company in 20 min (I was very impressed). At this point it's just getting that lined up again which hopefully shouldn't be a huge chore. Employer understands and is flexible on starting dates. I'm just more mad that Graebel jerked me around for days when the knew this poo poo was coming down. Well companies don't like admitting these things until they are ready to announce, usually to prevent clients jumping off and stuff. Was pretty funny when my pwoer provider went out of business and the agent I used informed me a few days early, when they called to tell me to switch and tried to sell me on another company I just told them that I already switched.
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Mar 16, 2017 10:07
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Welp, moved out on 1/31 after 45 days' notice, completely blanked on security deposit because we'd bought a house and had other things we were doing (more or less "we'll get it back when we get it back") and we got a list of charges against the deposit on 3/14. At this point we've already recouped the deposit in the fact that the mortgage is significantly cheaper than the rent was plus the house is more energy efficient so bills are lower. Is it even worth fighting (assume we did gently caress-all for standard rear end-covering like pictures or walkthrough or certified mail)? State law is kind of suggesting this itemization should have happened within 14 days, not a month and a half after we're out.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:09
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FAUXTON posted:Welp, moved out on 1/31 after 45 days' notice, completely blanked on security deposit because we'd bought a house and had other things we were doing (more or less "we'll get it back when we get it back") and we got a list of charges against the deposit on 3/14. I would definitely fight it to the point that you need a lawyer, at that point it depends on how much it is and if your state considers holes for fixtures protected or not.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:17
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FAUXTON posted:Welp, moved out on 1/31 after 45 days' notice, completely blanked on security deposit because we'd bought a house and had other things we were doing (more or less "we'll get it back when we get it back") and we got a list of charges against the deposit on 3/14.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:20
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Thanatosian posted:IANAL, but IMO, You don't even give a poo poo about having a good rental reference. If state law says that, I'd send a demand letter citing the law, and giving her a drop-dead date to have a check in your hand before you file suit. Small claims court is pretty easy most places (hardest part is usually service), and your deposit is probably worth a day and change of your time; IMO, not letting your landlord get away with that poo poo is worth even more. This. As a landlord and former renter who successfully sued a former landlord for not returning my deposit within the required 30 days, I say you can and should pursue this. Some states/jurisdictions will even award you some kind of penalty if the landlord does not follow the law for security deposit escrow, interest, and return or charge itemization. Google for a boiler plate demand letter and tailor it to your case. Cite your applicable landlord/tenant law, give your landlord a reasonable deadline to mail a cashier's check, and identify the time and court location (could be small claims, district court, magisterial court, etc in your jurisdiction) you will be filing for $xxxx (include any applicable penalties like double the full deposit). Mention that small claims judgements are a matter of public record and are reported on credit histories with the 3 major credit bureaus, possibly effecting their ability to secure employment and lending. Depending on what your state allows for collection of money judgements, you can threaten (but don't blackmail or threaten any action not legal in your state) public sheriff sale/auction of their personal and real property including their car and homes, wage garnishment, bank account garnishment or asset seizure, real estate property liens against the rental property and even the landlord's own home, and hiring a professional collection agency. Since they didn't meet the deposit return deadline, they're probably a small time landlord and not a professional management company. Your demand letter should be enough to scare them and teach them a lesson. If they're insolvent or incredibly stubborn, actually collecting on your small claims judgement can be very difficult and costly, though the filing fees and sheriff/auction costs are usually collectible. So decide carefully before you file your case. Do they have assets and equity in their home and rental properties? Do you know where they bank (look at any checks they gave you, or look at the endorsement side of the electronic copies of your rent checks)? Do you know where they live and work? Do you know what car they drive? Do they have enough personal property on the outside of their home to inventory for an auction/sale if they refuse entry to the inside? Cars, boats, lawn equipment and ATVs, etc. Send the demand letter even if you're not committed to suing them.
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Mar 17, 2017 13:33
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goku chewbacca posted:This. As a landlord and former renter who successfully sued a former landlord for not returning my deposit within the required 30 days, I say you can and should pursue this. Some states/jurisdictions will even award you some kind of penalty if the landlord does not follow the law for security deposit escrow, interest, and return or charge itemization. That's not how you write legal demands, you don't include possible execution scenarios and whatnot. Is it in the US?!
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Mar 17, 2017 13:59
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SEKCobra posted:That's not how you write legal demands, you don't include possible execution scenarios and whatnot. Is it in the US?! It's a little weird. Just demand the money you are owed and cite any relevant laws from your city/state. If they don't follow the law, file in small claims.
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Mar 17, 2017 14:04
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In California, you can basically burn the place to the ground, and if I don't send you an itemized receipt in 21 days, you can sue in small claims and win your deposit back. Are the itemized damages legitimate? Typically *you* don't have to prove there weren't damages, *they* have to prove there *were* damages. If you really caused the damages, suck it up and move on. If you legitimately cleaned and returned the place in the same condition, go after them.
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Mar 18, 2017 02:36
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photomikey posted:In California, you can basically burn the place to the ground, and if I don't send you an itemized receipt in 21 days, you can sue in small claims and win your deposit back. The thing about reasonable is that the landlord is claiming a bunch of poo poo had to be replaced due to "cat dander." Granted, we kept litter boxes in the basement and if they tracked piss onto the concrete for three years I could see a need to paint over it with kilz if it kept rising back up after cleaning. We kept the cats out of the upstairs (the only carpeted area in the unit) by putting up a 4-foot high baby gate and then ziptying plastic bin lids to it to push it to 6 feet because we didnt declaw the cats (but that's not required in lease fwiw) and didn't want them to come hounding us at 4:30AM daily. But replacing all the blinds and painting walls for pet dander? The hell kind of claim is that? e: I'm fairly sure the state law only sets a time limit on the landlord returning the deposit after a demand is made, which we didn't make, and a move-out notice almost certainly doesn't count. It's not really a big enough difference to make it worth contesting if we start piecemealing out blinds and paint. There was a cleaning fee already agreed to in the lease so there's no getting around that part. It's just that "pet dander" comes off as a bullshit way of pencilwhipping us out of the deposit. If it's lost then it's lost, such is life with cats and we're not in a position where we'd planned around getting it back so it's less us being harmed and more us not getting a check we utterly forgot about for a while. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 03:05
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What state?
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Mar 18, 2017 08:03
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photomikey posted:What state? Nebraska. Nolo.com seems to be slightly off on the wording of the security deposit deadline (14 days after moveout vs 14 days after demand) but it's likely they're reading caselaw into that too.
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Mar 18, 2017 19:45
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Things like paint and carpet usually have a lifetime measured in years for general wear and tear. So theoretically if the state mandated lifetime is 15 years for the paint and they last painted 10 years ago, even if they are successful at blaming cat dander for the need to repaint early, they are still on the hook for 2/3rds of the cost. Depends on state of course
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Mar 18, 2017 20:02
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Can you give us the rest of the story? The story if we called your landlord and asked his side of the story? It sounds like you had several cats for several years, did literally no cleaning, and were surprised they ate up your whole security deposit.
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Mar 18, 2017 22:02
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So my glorified dorm room has a few scratches in the wall from the previous tenant that I know the complex is going to ding me hundreds for. I've got some spackle and sandpaper for fixing them, should I try to get some paint as well? The walls look white to me but I'm no expert.
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Mar 18, 2017 22:09
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photomikey posted:Can you give us the rest of the story? The story if we called your landlord and asked his side of the story? It sounds like you had several cats for several years, did literally no cleaning, and were surprised they ate up your whole security deposit.
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Mar 18, 2017 22:32
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i like nice words
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photomikey posted:Can you give us the rest of the story? The story if we called your landlord and asked his side of the story? It sounds like you had several cats for several years, did literally no cleaning, and were surprised they ate up your whole security deposit. There isn't a "rest of the story." The only reference to cat piss is the basement where we kept the boxes (specifically to avoid as much tracked litter and potential lingering smell as possible inside the living area) with the rest being dander.
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Mar 19, 2017 02:05
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Anne Whateley posted:There's no justification for repainting walls due to "cat dander." If the landlord said the cats pissed up the walls somehow, then sure, but how is cat dander conceivably going to damage paint? If, as implied, they lived there three years with a number of cats and did zero cleaning, I can see how even just the very act of move-out cleaning would eat up an entire average-sized deposit.
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Mar 19, 2017 06:58
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Sure, and in that case the landlord would've written any of that. Instead he wrote "cat dander," which can't possibly damage wall paint, therefore the landlord is nuts and untrustworthy.
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Mar 19, 2017 07:03
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I didn't realize you'd seen the paperwork, the cashed check, and the apartment. I stand corrected.
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Mar 19, 2017 07:22
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Leave it to photo "Tenants have the right to eat poo poo" mikey to assume that the dude lived in an apartment for three years and literally never cleaned anything ever and is trying to screw his longsuffering, saintly landlord out of the deposit required to clean the hoarder hellhole he obviously left behind 
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Mar 19, 2017 07:32
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photomikey posted:When you read that they lived there three years, and "There was a cleaning fee already agreed to in the lease so there's no getting around that part", I assume that means they put zero effort into cleaning... "the rest of the story" could include that the deposit was $500 or $5000, and that they hired a professional maid to scrub floor to ceiling for two days, OR that they left a piss-stained couch and 2,000 lbs of yellowed newspapers behind. We bought a house in mid-December, moved shortly after closing and had been cleaning/moving after work/on weekends after moving the big stuff and essentials on day one. By the move-out date not only was the place cleaned many times over, nothing had been living there for a month and a half. Utilities were paid through February. The cleaning fee in the lease was for carpet shampooing of stairs/hallway/3bd (I.e. the whole carpeted area) whereas the guy's saying loving vinyl mini blinds have to be replaced due to "dander."
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Mar 19, 2017 08:04
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In TYOOL 2017 why would anyone type out piecemeal snippets of their landlord's claims instead of just snapping a pic of the document, cropping out the PII, and uploading it?
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Mar 19, 2017 08:12
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Toshimo posted:In TYOOL 2017 why would anyone type out piecemeal snippets of their landlord's claims instead of just snapping a pic of the document, cropping out the PII, and uploading it? Because it's a photocopy of a hand-written pad sheet with P2 (or at least the street address) referenced throughout, I'd need to type that poo poo out anyway?
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Mar 19, 2017 08:20
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I got an amazing deal on a combo twin tub washer/spin dryer for my small apartment - how much will I regret this? Moving from an automatic washer/dryer I'm guessing the extra steps are a small hassle
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Mar 19, 2017 17:09
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Does the 24 hour notice for landlords apply to just the house or house and yard? Our landlord has been digging around our foundation in our fenced backyard giving us no notice. We didn't see him till his truck was pulling out of the driveway so we didn't get a chance to ask wtf but I want to figure out how irate I should be when I contact the property manager. We're in NE.
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Mar 22, 2017 17:11
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Problem! posted:Does the 24 hour notice for landlords apply to just the house or house and yard? Our landlord has been digging around our foundation in our fenced backyard giving us no notice. We didn't see him till his truck was pulling out of the driveway so we didn't get a chance to ask wtf but I want to figure out how irate I should be when I contact the property manager. We're in NE. It would be polite to notify you, but typically when we think of notice it's to actually go into the dwelling.
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Mar 22, 2017 17:34
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Problem! posted:Does the 24 hour notice for landlords apply to just the house or house and yard? Our landlord has been digging around our foundation in our fenced backyard giving us no notice. We didn't see him till his truck was pulling out of the driveway so we didn't get a chance to ask wtf but I want to figure out how irate I should be when I contact the property manager. We're in NE. It's not explicitly specified in the URLTA (assuming you mean Nebraska) but given the usage of "enter" as in "one day notice of intent to enter" I'd assume it means actually going inside. There's other stuff about not being an rear end in a top hat about it (I.e. asking to come in the middle of the night or constantly saying no) but it doesn't seem to apply to the outside given the wording. It's not explicit though so you might want to bring it up as a possible issue, especially if you suspect he might be fishing for a reason to claim an emergency (and thus go in right away) but yeah it seems to lean toward just the structure and not the grounds.
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Mar 22, 2017 17:38
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I don't really care all that much, I'm only peeved because I have dogs and what if he opened our gate while the dogs were in the yard and they ran off or they jumped on him and knocked him over?
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Mar 22, 2017 17:47
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Problem! posted:I don't really care all that much, I'm only peeved because I have dogs and what if he opened our gate while the dogs were in the yard and they ran off or they jumped on him and knocked him over? Have you called him and talked to him?
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Mar 22, 2017 19:07
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Toshimo posted:Have you called him and talked to him? Yeah just call the guy and see if you can work something out. Landlords aren't all assholes or assholes on every topic. Mine was great about practically everything even if it seemed from time to time that he was over his head (e.g. we signed one lease in 2013 and spent 2+ years month to month after it expired and he never asked about signing a new one)
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Mar 22, 2017 19:18
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Toshimo posted:The heat pump in my apartment is failing to keep up in fantastic ways. I pressed them about it before I moved back in and they said they got it fixed. I went back over Friday and they had someone come out again. For the last several days it's been burning If it's like my experience it's a combination of low refrigerant/refrigerant leak and a balky compressor due to a bad capacitor. It took six visits from the shady HVAC technician to get it completely resolved. The AUX heat will keep running and accomplish very little since it's only there to provide a boost if your unit calls for heat when there's a significant differential between outside air and what you're set for.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:52
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a day sitting on Aux Heat and still failing to get back up to the 72 it's been set at. I e-mailed the other landlady last night and she actually got back to me promptly at 10pm on a Saturday night saying she would try to get an emergency guy over in the morning. We'll see. It's 56 on the inside now. Still set at 72.
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Dick Trauma posted:If it's like my experience it's a combination of low refrigerant/refrigerant leak and a balky compressor due to a bad capacitor. It took six visits from the shady HVAC technician to get it completely resolved. The AUX heat will keep running and accomplish very little since it's only there to provide a boost if your unit calls for heat when there's a significant differential between outside air and what you're set for. They found and fixed a leak, but problems persist. Waiting for the first bill to drop before I fight this fight again.
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Mar 22, 2017 20:00
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Toshimo posted:Have you called him and talked to him? I did and they claim they meant to give me notice but forgot
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Mar 23, 2017 01:03
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I finally got a copy of the new lease agreement from one of the roommates who's moving out, and this is bugging me: Is it normal for lease agreements to specify joint and several liability on all tenants? Asking because joint and several liability as a legal concept is some scary poo poo, especially if one of the tenants winds up being an rear end in a top hat and destroying something.
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Mar 28, 2017 18:29
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Yeah, it's normal and it's on purpose. They want you guys to be scared so you keep each other in line.
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Mar 28, 2017 18:34
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