The Home Ownership Thread

[Joffrey]

My agent that helped me purchase my condo (her first sale!) asked that I write her a review on zillow. I really would like to help her out but do not have a zillow account nor intend to start one just for this. Am I a jerk?

 

[sugarbutch]

My agent that helped me purchase my condo (her first sale!) asked that I write her a review on zillow. I really would like to help her out but do not have a zillow account nor intend to start one just for this. Am I a jerk?

You might be. But not for this reason.

 

[RedLantern]

What’s the line on VV moving back in?

 

[imatlas]

Naturally replacing the rotten trim around our garage door has now spiraled into doing major structural repairs along with replacing the garage door and automatic opener.

 

[otc]

That sounds very restrictive. You guys don’t have laws that prohibit these kinds of rental contracts? A months notice is the most you’ll get here, and for sure not on round years.

that contract would be laughed out of court, with the very real possibility that she would be fined for predatory practices as a parting gift.

By the way, love ‘the Van Veen property saga ’ .

That kind of stuff is pretty normal here I think, although rules vary a lot between cities/states.

I mean--you signed an agreement to rent a place for 12 months...shouldn't there be some penalty for breach if you decide you want to leave early? You can find people who will give you a contract with reduced notice requirements, but that usually comes at a premium. Maybe there are some places where the law makes all leases flexible, but my bet would be that average housing costs are slightly higher there since the landlords take more risk.

Often there's some sort of buy-out clause where you can pay 2-3 months of rent to break the lease. And around here you have the legal right to sublease your unit, so if you can find someone to move in and take over your payments, your landlord has to allow it within reason. Otherwise you are responsible for paying rent every month whether you are physically there or not.

You can break the lease for things like breaking the law or failure to do maintenance, but even that usually requires giving notice and offering a chance to fix. E.g. in my town they get 3 days for major issues like no heat and 14 days for other issues. If they don't fix within that time period, you are free to break the lease, but you have to actually give them notice, and you must break within 30 days of that notice expiring.

That's probably where Van Veen is going to run into trouble. He has a list of grievances, but he didn't complain in writing, wait for them to not get fixed, and then immediately move out. He stayed in the unit (and self-remedied some issues) until it was convenient to leave (he bought a house) which makes it hard to prove the case that they unit was not habitable.

 

[Van Veen]

That sounds very restrictive. You guys don’t have laws that prohibit these kinds of rental contracts? A months notice is the most you’ll get here, and for sure not on round years.

that contract would be laughed out of court, with the very real possibility that she would be fined for predatory practices as a parting gift.

By the way, love ‘the Van Veen property saga ’ .

My lawyer says no lawyer would agree to represent her given the way the lease is written. Mainly because it doesn't allow her to recover attorney's fees.

Oh and also since she claims to have an attorney, he says that he can't send her a letter directly. He has to send it to the attorney. So now we get to call her bluff and ask for her attorney's address.

 

[NorCal]

My agent that helped me purchase my condo (her first sale!) asked that I write her a review on zillow. I really would like to help her out but do not have a zillow account nor intend to start one just for this. Am I a jerk?

Yes. Hook a girl up.

 

[sugarbutch]

We paid $300 this morning for a plumber to clear the VERY slow drain in our backyard. Turns out some construction debris from our remodel a few years ago was obstructing it. Given how little rain we get, this was easy to back-burner, but I'm happy to have it checked off the list. I'm even more pleased that I cleared out the scupper on our roof a couple of months ago when I fixed the skylight mechanism in our bathroom.

EDIT: The context is that the Bay Area is in the middle of the atmospheric river, and both would have been a pain **********.

 

[Piobaire]

My lawyer says...

How much do you owe your lawyer at this point?

 

[Van Veen]

That's probably where Van Veen is going to run into trouble. He has a list of grievances, but he didn't complain in writing, wait for them to not get fixed, and then immediately move out. He stayed in the unit (and self-remedied some issues) until it was convenient to leave (he bought a house) which makes it hard to prove the case that they unit was not habitable.

The argument isn't that the unit wasn't habitable. It clearly was.

The argument is that the way she treated us every time we made a repair request was harassment intended to dissuade us from making further requests. Most overtly, "Its been two months since you have reported something wrong so I guess we are all lucky!" is clearly meant to make us feel guilty about making repair requests.

It should not take a 20-30 minute back and forth conversation to get her to send a plumber to fix a leak. I should not have to draw a floorplan of the house to explain to her why she's wrong about which bathroom is leaking through to the downstairs ceiling. I should not have to go back and forth with her to get her to replace smoke detector from 1975. It's not your tenant's responsibility to diagnose plumbing and electrical problems so you don't have to pay the plumber/electrician as much. Literally every time we asked for a repair, if she actually agreed to do it, that took multiple frustrating back-and-forth emails or texts before she actually did something.

By repeatedly claiming we're responsible for making certain repairs, she's preying on the fact that this is an unequal bargaining relationship. Until I started researching this, I was not aware of the fact that she cannot pass her maintenance duties onto the tenant. A tenant must also be fairly compensated (outside of the lease) for making any repairs the landlord requests.

What finally pushed us over the edge was her writing a pages-long screed about our responsibilities as tenants that is completely incorrect in terms of NC rental laws.

We'll see what happens if she does sue us.

How much do you owe your lawyer at this point?

$0. It pays to build relationships.

 

[Piobaire]

? ? ? ? ? ?

 

[NakedYoga]

My lawyer says no lawyer would agree to represent her

How long has your lawyer been practicing?

 

[imatlas]

How long has your lawyer been practicing?

I’ll have you know that I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night good sir.

 

[Van Veen]

How long has your lawyer been practicing?

Graduated from Cooley last year.

 

[otc]

The argument isn't that the unit wasn't habitable. It clearly was.

The argument is that the way she treated us every time we made a repair request was harassment intended to dissuade us from making further requests. Most overtly, "Its been two months since you have reported something wrong so I guess we are all lucky!" is clearly meant to make us feel guilty about making repair requests.

It should not take a 20-30 minute back and forth conversation to get her to send a plumber to fix a leak. I should not have to draw a floorplan of the house to explain to her why she's wrong about which bathroom is leaking through to the downstairs ceiling. I should not have to go back and forth with her to get her to replace smoke detector from 1975. It's not your tenant's responsibility to diagnose plumbing and electrical problems so you don't have to pay the plumber/electrician as much. Literally every time we asked for a repair, if she actually agreed to do it, that took multiple frustrating back-and-forth emails or texts before she actually did something.

By repeatedly claiming we're responsible for making certain repairs, she's preying on the fact that this is an unequal bargaining relationship. Until I started researching this, I was not aware of the fact that she cannot pass her maintenance duties onto the tenant. A tenant must also be fairly compensated (outside of the lease) for making any repairs the landlord requests.

What finally pushed us over the edge was her writing a pages-long screed about our responsibilities as tenants that is completely incorrect in terms of NC rental laws.

We'll see what happens if she does sue us.


$0. It pays to build relationships.

I'm not saying your landlord doesn't suck.

I'm just saying that in a lot of places if you didn't take issue with that at the time it was occurring and act immediately with written demands (and then move out when she didn't meat them) that it makes your case a lot harder to prove.

Although at least you have your SF posts! That's gotta be courtroom gold--timestamped immutable records of the actions you did attempt to take to assert your rights as a tenant which is exactly what you need to try to prove some kind of retaliation case.