Withholding Rent?
Looking for input from owners who rent (or others with similar experience) on this board on a situation with my landlord. I agreed to allow my landlord into the apartment to do some work on the bathroom. The work was to last no longer than 3 days which was fine given that I would be…
Looking for input from owners who rent (or others with similar experience) on this board on a situation with my landlord. I agreed to allow my landlord into the apartment to do some work on the bathroom. The work was to last no longer than 3 days which was fine given that I would be out of town for those days. Of course the work was not done upon my return and the bathroom contained no sink, tub or toilet — they were all in the living room. After many excuses and a whole week the landlord finally finished the work recently — six days after it had been promised — leaving me with none of the items mentioned above during those 6 days. Since the apartment with toilet, sink and tub is what I pay for every month I’m hoping to deduct the days off of my monthly rent. This total exceeds what the landlord has offered to deduct ($200 plus another $100 for a cleaning service)
Am I within my rights to deduct the 6 days off of my rent?
IMO, take the $300 and drop it, OP.
A synthesis of the above: negotiate in good faith and then, depending on how much you like your apartment/landlord, take your lumps or go to court.
Long-story-short, I feel like my landlord owes me $150 for problems with KeySpan. He’s kind of hippie-dippie about the whole thing–it is Park Slope–but I am generally pretty happy with my set up so I let it slide. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off every time I think about it. It means that I don’t think about it a lot.
I think it’s probable that the LL was at the mercy of the contractor & it sounds as if he tried to do his best for you. In a similar position, I’ve offered tenants accomodation in my house but they’ve always opted to stay where they are & make use of a neighbor’s facilities. What did you use in the interim? If you were able to make do, I’d just take what he’s offering since you managed w/o too much duress. He’s already out of the money he put into the repairs & I think he made a reasonable suggestion.
No bathroom!? And the toilet in the living room ..yuch. I think absolutely OP is entitled to 6 days rent if not more. And also it might not be worth fighting over it. Try negotiation.
When our tenant’s washing m/c broke and we couldn’t get a new one for 9 days, my wife wanted to reimburse them $100. Even I balked. We bought them a bottle of champagne. I guess we are just wimps as landlords.
Yes you have a right to deduct the money for the 6 days of inconvenience. You have to be careful how you do it. You don’t want the landlord suing for non-payment.
Maybe you can file an HP proceeding in housing court. Call the housing court and they will instruct you in the paperwork.
You will get a free lawyer from the court. It dosnt matter how much money you have. They wil represent you in the action.
It is part of the Hp proceeding.
Good Luck.
PS
Lets hope you can verify all this.
I am a landlord now but the last time I was a tenant I moved in to a place where there was no electricity despite being assured that there would be before the move in date (electric was included with the rent so it was LL responsibility to get service).
Apparently there is a legal concept of “warrant of habitability”. Not sure if lack of electricity counts toward habitability or not, I imagine a bathroom does. You can google it yourself, here’s the first link that I turned up:
http://www.rentlaw.com/ny/habitability.htm
Anyway, I forget how long we had no electricity but let’s say it was 5 days. Then I considered how much of the value of the apartment was imputed by the lack of electricity. We could continue to live there, sleep, bathe, but it was not convenient. I reckoned on a reduction of value of 1/3.
So, let’s say I was paying 2,400 per month, further let’s say it was a 30 day month.
$2,400/month rent * 5 days inconvenience/30 days in month * 1/3 inconvenience factor = $133.33 fair rent reduction for 5 days inconvenience.
On top of that you could add a cleaning fee (did not apply to us).
We presented this to the managing agent and she agreed immediately. This was our first interaction with each other and I think we were both pleased to see that we were dealing with reasonable people.
Personally, the only way I can see justifying claiming a full refund of rent for the days you were inconvenienced is if you had no use of the apartment. This is not a legal opinion, just my thought on what is fair.
If your 6-day amount isn’t that much different than the $300, and otherwise you like you place/landlord let it go. #$%#$ happens. Making a big deal over a hundred bucks or so might wind up costing you more than a hundred bucks or so.
if the problem would be unbearable and – you could try to call him and explain, that you will move to hotel and deduct the hotel bill from the rent. But this need to be discussed upfront. I think it is still reasonable to ask to deduct 6 days of rent – I done it before when I spent a week without heat.
In any case your landlord sounds reasonable and most likely will agree on this. (at the end of the day it is a contractor who created all problems not the landlord) So I would talk to him before getting into all this big legal battle where everybody loose but lawyers.
yeah, rather than get on a whole legal mess, just take the $300. Seems like he’s trying to be reasonable.