Nadine Bamberger
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You Illegally Remove A Bike Rack In Front Of My Home/Business, Just Wait
I live in the same building that I work in. I manage a sandwich shop in a heavily urban area. The landlord of the building is an angry old man, who we all love, but can be crotchety at times. He took upon himself to remove the bike rack in front of my building, illegally. His thinking was it would cut down on people leaning on it to smoke cigarettes. So I emailed the department of transportation, stating that if they continue to be removed, we'll potentially miss out on business from cyclist, on the theory that if they have no place to securely lock up their bikes. My landlord is on vacation, when he comes back on Wednesday, there will be a brand new 20 foot bike rack installed directly in front of the building, courtesy of the city.
'give Us More Money Or We'll Evict You' Go Ahead
A few years ago my best friend and I rented a tiny 2 bedroom flat together. This place was kind of terrible; my friend's room had a hole cut into the wall so the last foot of the bed would fit (this became a 'mantlepiece' in the next room), the kitchen was the size of a child's playhouse kitchen and the upstairs neighbours spent all ours of the day and night screaming at each other or having loud sex. BUT, we were mostly happy because we were over living with 6+ other people. We paid £75 a week each + bills for this place, which was pretty standard for a 2 bed flat in our area. Then 6 months into our 1yr contract the landlord sold the terraced house our flat (and 5 others) was a part of to a middle aged married couple who were first time landlords. They were the kind of people who thought they were smarter than everybody else and I got the impression they thought property management was going to be the easiest thing ever. We had no problem throughout the sale process, we were assured nothing would change, we didn't interact much with the landlord before anyway. Then 2 weeks after the sale we got an email from the couple saying that we owed them £20 each more a week. Basically, in our contract it stated our rent was £75 each a week about 10 times, but there was one typo where it said our rent was £95 each, so they said they could legally charge us £95. We laughed at this, but when it became clear they were serious we reached out to the letting agent and got them to put in writing that it was a typo, our rent was always £75, and they even gave us the original advert for the flat with the correct rent on it. We thought this would be the end of it. We were wrong. The couple insisted on coming to our flat for an in person meeting. When they got there they said that they asked the old landlord about it and he was shocked that we'd not been paying enough for 6 months now and the rent was always £95. I didn't buy this because they had nothing in writing, but I made the argument that OF COURSE he would say that because he wouldn't want it to seem like he sold under false pretences, and if we'd been underpaying by a total of like £160 a month why had he never spoken to us about it?? They said that he was a busy guy with too many properties, then the husband spent ages condescendingly explaining mortgages to us. Then they declared that if we did not start paying them the higher rent, they would evict us and we had 24hrs to pay or 30days to get out and they left. Honestly I think they saw two 22yr old girls and thought they could scare us into paying more money. What they didn't know is that my friend and I are very pleasant until you piss us off and we become vindictive motherf*****s. We decided that night that if they wanted to evict us from this shit hole we were gonna make them do it properly and if they were so pedantic about contracts and rules we were going to stop letting ANYTHING slide. The couple woke up the next morning with an email from our lawyer (my flatmates brother, a bored lawyer with time on his hands) requesting a formal eviction notice in writing and laying out a record of last night's conversation. Thing was they didn't actually have legal grounds to evict us because even if we went to court and a judge favoured their interpretation of the contract (we were advised this was unlikely) we still didn't owe them more than a month's rent, which would have been their only legal way of evicting us because we were otherwise great tenants. By 9:15am they were ringing us, but we ignored them and emailed that our lawyer had advised us to only communicate in writing. We then sent an email informing them that the fancy new front door they just installed could not be unlocked from the inside without a key, which violated fire safety laws and unfortunately if this wasn't rectified ASAP we would have to report it. We then sent texts that showed them repeatedly entering our flat with less than 24hrs notice, and did they know that this was illegal? Maybe we should talk to the other tenants because if they're doing this to everyone then this could be quite a problem... After about 3 days of this we received a very nice email saying that they don't agree our rent was supposed to be £75 each a week, but they would graciously allow us to finish out our contract at that rate. By this point we'd found a flat triple the size for £80 each a week and wanted out of that hamster cage, so we offered to move if they signed mutual surrender forms. They eagarly agreed. The best part was that they stubbornly tried to rent that flat at the higher rate, despite us telling them it was a terrible idea, and the flat was empty for over a year. And because they had agreed to end our contract early they got stuck paying the council tax, not me!
I Should've Read The Lease? Well You Should've Read The Law!
It was coming up on renewal time, and my landlord had just sent renewal paperwork with a big rent increase. Knowing I could find a cheaper place nearby, I sent in my written notice to vacate, which was required 60 days before my move out date. The landlord rejected my notice, and told me that if I read the lease I would know that notice to vacate was required 60 days before the first day of the month that I wanted to move out, not 60 days before the move out day itself. As a result, they were going to force me to submit a new notice the following month and pay an extra months rent (at the new higher rate). I was offended by their attitude, but accepted that they had won - at least until I checked the lease against local rental law. While they were right about the required date of my notice to vacate, they had failed to send me notice of rent increase on time, because I was supposed to have a minimum of 2 weeks AFTER receiving their notice of rent increase to put in my notice to leave at the end of my original lease term! I wrote back to them with a screenshot of the relevant city law and said "while you are correct about the due date of my notice to vacate, you also failed to send me timely notice of rent increase. You can't require me to send you notice to vacate at the end of my lease term before knowing how much you will be raising rent! So how do you plan to remedy your breach of the lease?" After what must have been a tense call with their lawyer, my landlord agreed to accept my original notice and let me move out on the day I planned. Since I had already paid my last months rent, they never got another cent from me!
You Want To Follow The Lease To The Letter Of The Law? Let’s Dance
So, about 10 years ago my husband and I were renting a house while we tried to buy a place. The landlord seemed so nice, and it was a great situation. When we found a place to buy, we gave him our forwarding information along with the keys. It took about two months to get our deposit back, and we were shocked to say the least. He had taken $400 out. He had an enclosed porch that had screens with no glass. It had outdoor carpeting that was gross, and we bought a remnant to cover the carpet since we had little kids and it was questionable (no doubt due to the year round screens - including rain storms, etc). It wasn’t ideal, but it was a rental. When we left, we rolled up the carpet and threw it out. Anyway, the landlord stated in his letter that he was taking out the $400 because we had broken the lease by having a dog - and his proof was the condition of that carpet. We did not have a dog, and that carpet was gross when we got there. We tried to explain that, but he was having none of it and would ignore our attempts to reach out (plus, how do you prove the absence of something?). Cue malicious compliance: you want to follow the lease so carefully as to make up animals? Well, perhaps you should read the laws a little better. According to our state, landlords have exactly one month to send the deposit back. He took two. According to the law, you can be held liable for three times the amount (1800, in our case). So we sued. We no longer wanted the $400 back; we wanted $5400. While it was somewhat painful (he dodged attempts to serve him, he had out of state attorney friends try to intimidate us) he eventually had to hire an attorney, and we settled on $2000 (in addition to the $1400 we got back). We filed with the help of a friend so we didn't owe an attorney - just filing fees. He ended up paying $2000 plus attorney fees instead of our $400 for a phantom dog. Know your rights as tenants!
"As Per The Lease" We Owe You Late Fees?! Let's Check That Lease Again...
So this happened in college to me and my friends. We moved into a house from some small rental company based in the area after signing a year long lease. House is great, no problems, but we were told a week or so after moving in we would have to send our rent checks each month by the 5th by mail to their new office in the town 120 miles over. Whatever, barely a problem so we just go with it. So for the next 6 months or so we both mail our rent checks at the same time by the 1st of each month, and never had any problems. Then one day my friend receives a call from the landlord saying we owe 100+ dollars each in late fees becuase 2 months our rent checks came in the mail a day after they were due. They were DEFINITELY postmarked AT LEAST 3 days before that, but thats not the point. So he says, "per the lease you each owe 50 dollars for each month it is late and so that is 200 dollars total" and we said well it was definitely postmarked multiple days in advance and its not our fault the USPS didn't deliver it on time, and that we had no way to know that it wasn't delivered on time, so how could we be accountable for these fees? He responded with, "Go read the document, per the lease your late fees are stated clearly, you have until next month to pay" then he hung up. We pulled up our lease, and just as he asked us to do, we read it. He was right - based on all we knew we each owed them 100 bucks - damn. But, in a section regarding payment, CLEARLY stated, we were to HAND DELIVER our rent checks to their office which was still addressed to their OLD office in town, and the address we were supposed to deliver them to WAS NOT the one they had us sending our checks to. So we called them back, "we looked at the lease, and per the lease, we are not required to send checks to that office but to this office insert old office address so we will be bringing our checks there from now on and will not be paying any late fees because we technically never even agreed in the lease to mail our checks. The landlord flipped saying we were being children, that this was unfair, and he was going to get our parents on the phone (he literally said that, despite the fact both our parents were obviously on our side and we were 20ish year old people). We just said "well if you want your rent money we will bring it to the location described in our signed lease, since as per the lease you need it delivered there and we don't feel comfortable mailing them to unknown locations". Inevitably he buckled, he knew he was at fault, and dropped the late fees and said we wouldn't owe any more late fees ever so long as the envelope was post marked on the right day. Every month after that we waited until the day before to mail them out, ensuring they wouldn't receive their money until at least a couple days after it was due. We stayed in the house the next year (aside from this instance, they weren't too bad compared to some other college town landlords) and they changed the lease so it couldn't happen again. Felt good.
I Made A Point To Print Out A Dozen Copies Of The “Landlord Tenant Act” Of My City, Highlight All The Areas She Had Tried Scam Us Over
As I was moving out of my duplex, my landlord looked in the window - saw a mess of boxes, bags, papers and shipping supplies and told us we were “messy” and she was raising our rent $200-300 more a month. She said we could pay that or leave. I told her we would be out by the end of the month. Come the end of the month, we are out and even shampoo’d the carpets (didn’t have to). The landlord dragged her feet and said she was keeping our deposit because of a laundry list of damage to the duplex. I emailed her back with a slew of photos of said damage on the day we moved in and told her that if I didn’t see my security deposit, in full, I was taking her to court. Got it 2 days later. I made a point to print out a dozen copies of the “Landlord Tenant Act” of my city, highlight all the areas she had tried to screw us over (the last few years) - then I took those booklets, looked up her properties online - and gave a copy to each of her tenants.
You Would Like Me To Adhere To The Contract? In That Case I Require A Hotel Until You Resolve All Of These Issues
A few years ago, I moved back to the city in which I was a university student. As I was now 'a young professional', and had experienced significant issues with housemates in the past (non-payment of bills, having to do all the cleaning) I decided that I would rent a small flat from a reputable agency which specifically catered for 'young professionals' such as myself. I went and viewed the property, which was quite messy, and needed to have a few things addressed (ie the vinyl flooring in the kitchen was ripped, one of the drawers in the freezer was broken). But seeing as tenants were still living in the property, and the agency assured me that between tenants the landlord would clean the property, and resolve any small issues prior to moving in, I happily signed a contract, and wrote a cheques for the deposit, and first month of rent. Two months later, I moved into the property, and was welcomed with the following issues (note, I just happened to stumble upon the list I made at the time when clearing out an old hard drive a few days ago): General: The entire property had not been cleaned Fire door wouldn't close (breach of fire regulations) The previous tenants had left much of their belongings behind, namely clothes and bedding General waste was present in all rooms (bins had not been emptied) Batteries had been removed from all of the fire/smoke alarms (by law, they were meant to be hard wired in rented property) Half of a lightbulbs had been removed from the property Hallway: Mains supply & circuit breaker ripped from wall (incredibly dangerous) Carpet soiled Bedroom: Slats on bed broken (so would not have been able to sleep on it) Mattress torn and ripped Vinyl floor ripped up Window jammed closed Bathroom: Faecal matter on light switch Mirror broken Toilet had not been cleaned (still had faecal stains in Shower door broken off hinges Vinyl floor torn up Kitchen/Living Room: Washing machine broken All draws in fridge freezer absent or broken beyond repair Gas cooker, missing burner caps and pan rail (therefore unusable) Two cupboard doors hanging off Vinyl floor ripped up Curtain pole ripped down It was very clear that two things had occurred here. The first being that the previous tenants had done a bit of a number on the property. That they had not respected the property, and had left quite a lot of damage in their wake. They did not even have the decency to empty the place of their contents, and at bare minimum, take the rubbish out before leaving. The second issue however, is that the landlord had evidently not made any significant attempt to bring the property back into a habitable state prior to me moving in. Being the reasonable guy that I was, I called the landlord and asked if he could resolve these issues immediately. Primarily as the property was genuinely in a dangerous, and non-inhabitable state. I did not want to be a dick about it, however, at the bare minimum, the flat should be safe to inhabit. The landlord dismissed all of my complaints, and stated that his wife (he was on a business trip to Dubai) had inspected and cleaned the property a few days before, and all was fine (a blatant lie). I told him that I was extremely unhappy with the situation, and he told me to 'adhere to the contract which I had signed'. He subsequently put the phone down. Any sympathy I had for the landlord evaporated at this moment. He was happy for me to live in a dangerous property. So I went through my contract line by line, and found two key pieces of information: If a property is deemed to be in breach of fire regulations and/or is deemed uninhabitable by a suitable representative, it is the responsibility of the landlord to resolve such issues immediately If the landlord cannot resolve such issues immediately, it is the responsibility of the landlord to provide alternative accommodation to the tenant until the property is returned to a habitable state. Fortunately, a close member of my family at the time was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Within the hour I had a formal letter stating that the property was uninhabitable, and dangerous. I had this emailed to the landlord (address helpfully listed on the contract). Within 10 minutes, I had a call from him arranging emergency accommodation at a local hotel until he returned from his business trip, 3 days later. On his return, he drove directly to the property from the airport, and returned the cheques for my deposit and first months rent to me, and asked me to move out. Which I gladly did. Unbeknownst to him, a copy of the letter had been sent by my family member to the Housing Ombudsman, and the local authority. The last thing I heard is that this bloke ended up being investigated, heavily fined, and had to sell the house. TLDR: Landlord rents me dangerous property, and tells me to adhere to the contract. I adhere to the contract, and get a weekend in a hotel, all of my money back, and he is heavily fined and sells the property.
Landlord Advertises All Of Our Company’s Equipment For Sale To Our Competitors. Best Follow Our Eviction To The Letter
Tl;dr (SPOILERS) landlord gives us 7 days to vacate our leisure business from the building, he thinks we cant empty the business during lockdown, and proceeds to advertise OUR equipment for sale to our competition. We sell everything in 7 days and destroy the rest. Enjoy no rent and the loss of your potential buyers. I work for a leisure company, think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag (can't be specific) Prior to lockdown, Managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact. Then 2020’s shit hit the fan. All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess. Negotiations began to slip down the priority list; nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the sites closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area. We were wrong. A few days ago we received a letter saying we had 7 days to leave the premises and take everything with us. We are reminded that anything left in the building after 7 days will become the landlord's property! (that line is very important). Now a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder. Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult. To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse; A few days into our 7-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE INSTALLED. “Ready to go, just needs re-branding.” The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won't be able to empty the park. We were furious. And here is where the malicious compliance came in, we were told we had 7 days to move everything we owned out of the property. so that's what we did. Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling or destroying everything that was related to us. We didn't even leave light fittings. In every other sight vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get. We leave most the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognisable as what they once were) but not this building. We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (Wooden walls to divide up the space) ripped apart our manager's offices and removed all artwork, and locke The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were). Lockdown has been extended another 4 weeks, so he has at least another 4 weeks without rent (we were paying) and won't have any potential buyers. Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, tv’s, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages. UPDATE Here is what happened next: We handed in the keys and it was probably the quickest handover we’ve ever had. The landlord Cleary didn’t want to make any kind of conversation and there was definitely an elephant in the room, but he definitely said NOTHING about the lack of our equipment. Complications did arise when we went to get back various deposits, But he had no case to withhold the deposits from us as the building was in excellent shape. (we had conducted much of the maintenance work ourselves, so the building was in a significantly better condition than we found it, (we also cleaned up 99% of the rubbish and dirt from our demolition crusade so he couldn't bill us for cleaning) ) A very minor bit of pressing from our legal team meant that we received everything owed back in full! The building is still Vacant and as of yet we don't know of any potential buyers.
Landlord Tries To Keep Security Deposit... Ummm, No
About 10 years ago, my at-the-time girlfriend (now wife) and I moved from the area we went to college to an apartment near where we planned to start our careers. I say it was an apartment, but it was really the basement of a house that the landlord had walled off to create 2 "apartments" to rent. The place was kinda crappy, but the rent was cheap for the area, and we were close to work. Everything was fine for a few months, but the only parking for us was on the street out front - the couple that rented the upstairs "apartment" had rights to the garage and driveway (they paid more than we did). Suddenly my car got a couple BS tickets for parking on the street - I'm guessing some ass-clown cop needed to meet their quota - and my girlfriend's car got sideswiped in a hit & run. This crap had to stop, so we emailed the landlord (her preferred form of communication) to ask if there's anywhere safe for us to park. She replies, "Park anywhere you want." We had noticed that our upstairs neighbors usually eschewed the driveway to park in the front yard (they were horribly lazy), so we figured that would be a good spot for us too. We parked in the front yard the rest of the year. We figured that would be the end of it. We finished our lease, left the place in better shape than we found it, and requested our $1500 security deposit back. After a couple weeks, we got a check for $700... WTF!?!?!? Since there was no explanation, we asked the landlord for one, and she replied that the deducted amount was to "re-sod the lawn", claiming that parking on it had damaged it. Now, I was the one who cut the grass at this house while we stayed there, so I was well aware that the lawn was more weeds and bald spots than grass - picture the African savanna in mid-summer. No one had ever lifted a finger to landscape any part of the property, but the landlord wanted to sell the house once the leases were up, and she figured she could get the renters to pay for a nice, new lawn. I complained to the landlord: didn't care. I put in a complaint with the local housing department: didn't care. I threatened to take her to court: didn't care. So, that's what I did - took her to small claims court. I had never sued anyone before, so I was going in prepared! I took pictures of the entire front yard - the area that we "damaged" was actually one of the best patches of grass, though it did have a small rut that my tires made when the yard was muddy in the summer. I got testimonials from our upstairs and across-the-street neighbors. Most importantly, I printed out the email where the landlord told us to park anywhere. We were suing for $1800 to cover court costs and us both missing a day of work on top of the full security deposit. In mediation we said we would settle for $1400, but she must have thought she was in the right because she refused to offer a penny more than the original $700 check, which we never cashed. When we got in front of the judge, it was pretty clear that she had no evidence, hadn't prepared anything, and just assumed that us "kids" would fall on our faces. We did not. We put everything we had in front of the judge and made our claim (he was impressed). He stopped us when we showed him the email to ask the landlord, "Did you really tell them to park wherever they wanted?" When she said "yes", the judge replied "Then what are we even talking about?", and that was that. Judgement in full for us, and that b***h had to pay to re-sod her own damn lawn. Next time you tell someone to "park wherever you want", you'd better mean it. Or at least don't try to f**k someone over when they comply with what you said! If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
Our Landlord Told Me 'Go Ahead! Call The City Inspector' So I Did
This happened in 2018, I just moved to a new apartment. It was a three bedroom first floor apartment and it had a finished basement. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen on the first floor. It also had a bedroom (with a full bath) in the basement and a bar/gaming area. It was also in a very nice area of the city. The apartment was owned by a corporation. Honestly, we loved that apartment, until it kept having recurring issues in the basement. The carpet was wet from time to time, at first the landlord would send a cleaner to come and handle it but it keeps happening. I asked them to check and fix the issue. They did not do it, I told him I'll call the city inspector to check the building, they laughed at me and told me 'go ahead, call the city inspector', so I did. I called the city twice until I finally was connected to the right department and they sent an inspector a week later. The inspector found so many building violations. They told me they'd contact the building owner and would come again. The next day, the owner called and begged me to tell them what I know about the problem with the apartment. I told them that I sent complaints multiple times, they should check their record. The city inspector, the owner and the property manager came two weeks after that, the city inspector was whooping their a***s. He laid it to them, it was bad. They have to deal with structural and foundational issues and some safety issues too. There were 4 tenants in that building including us, imagine it was a big colonial/multi family home divided into four apartments. They had to break the lease with all of us to fix the building. They couldn't fix it with us being there. We were ready and already consulted a lawyer, we told them that: 1. We want our deposit back before moving out 2. They paid for all of our moving expenses 3. They paid for our deposit at the next place They could not kick us out, they could not rent the apartment after the inspections, there were four of us and we could all sue them for placing us in a dangerous building. In the end they spent so much money to relocate us and fix the apartment.
He Wanted It Painted. They Painted It
My grandfather was born in 1943 and was sailor in the 60s. He subscribed to a very tight honour code when it came to taking care of one's friends and community. So when a little old lady who had lived in her house as long as anyone could remember had her rental lease passed on to a new owner, no one was pleased when he evicted her, after higher rent. My grandfather, however, offered to help with the exit maintenance, and the landlord requested a new paint job. So paint it he did, in one day, with all his sailor mates. Every interior wall, floor and roof with black ship paint. You know, the stuff that's supposed to withstand being at sea. My grandfather said he was irate, but couldn't do anything because all he had requested was a paint job with no other stipulations, and that's what they had done. Nadine Bamberger • upvoted 3 items 1 day ago
staff-sharing-hotel-secrets-red-flags
Know what services the hotel has before you arrive. I work at a limited service hotel where our 3 major perks are free internet, free breakfast, and free local calls.. it's pretty basic and gets really annoying when guests are outraged by the fact that we don't have a pool or a restaurant or a gym. It takes a two second Google search to figure this out and saves you from looking like an idiot when you're angry about something you should have known in the first place.This Panda hasn't followed anyone yet
Nadine Bamberger • 96 followers
