Rental Advice/Negotiation

First off I must apologize for this epic saga. I think writing it was a sort of therapy…I needed to get it all out. I don’t expect everyone to read it…but thank you in advance to those who do and respond.

I moved to Park Slope this past May from a rent stabilized floor through in Manhattan with the hopes of living in a mellow, family friendly neighborhood for my wife, 6 month old daughter and myself. After a couple of months of looking at many 2 bedroom apartments, half of which were in need of a gut renovation, I thought we found the closest thing to perfection possible in a North Slope 2 bedroom garden apartment in a 200 year old brownstone…

…Of course we had to go through a broker (who by answering a craigslist ad and showing the apartment once gladly took my $3400). I met the landlord while viewing the apartment with the broker. At first he seemed ok enough, a little off but ok. His credentials were good…5th ave business owner, multiple higher education degrees, owned the building for about 25yrs. As we toured the apartment he assured me he would clear out the refuse (yes, as in garbage-rused bicycle, pieces of wood, etc.) from the storage space under the stoop so that we could use the space and from the back yard (construction waste left from the building of his deck years ago). He also mentioned that the basement (which must be accessed through our apartment) needed cleaning out, but that he might clear a space for use to use as storage. He half heartedly mentioned he would paint, which I may have dismissed as I thought at first glance that the walls/paint was in good shape. After viewing many apartments that were in much, much worse physical condition for the same price point ($2600/mth range) I jumped on the apartment and singed the lease that day. One thing that sort of stood out to me but I didn’t think much of was an “as is” clause in the lease…something I’ve never heard or seen in a rental agreement. After signing the lease the landlord told me he was going out of town on business immediately for a month and that I should contact his wife if we had questions, etc. while moving in. We agreed to pay a third months rent so we could get in a little early and prep the apartment before the actual moving day. One thing we decided was to have the floors refinished using a non-sanding, green method as our baby was crawling around and we knew she’s be spending quite a bit of time on the floor. We contacted the landlords wife and she informed me they had no interest in helping with the cost. We went ahead anyway and paid for it ourselves ($1200). Also, after closer inspection and with the previous tenants furniture gone, we noticed that the paint/walls weren’t in quite as good of shape as we had previously thought. I contacted the landlady again to see if she had anyone she used for painting, sort of feeling her out since I knew I had earlier declined the paint job and hoping she’d offer to take care of it. She didn’t really bite so we went ahead on our own and painted nearly the entire apartment, using water based, baby safe paint. During the process of cleaning (pretty filthy) and painting we it became quickly apparent that the apartment was the artifact of a shoddy, DIY, 20-year old renovation job. Also, there were a couple of holes in the walls, unfinished trim, light fixtures falling from the ceiling (exposed wires, not grounded), a broken screen door, missing door jams/thresholds, no fire detectors and many other small things wrong. Since the landlord was out of town for a month and we were moving in that week and because the landlady didn’t seem to want to deal with us, and because the issues showed evidence that they had been that way for many, many years we took it on ourselves to fix the place up (with the help of a contractor friend). It was a lot of time, elbow grease and another chunk of cash…but we thought maybe it was worth it as long as we stayed here a while. I think at this point we were beginning to have some feelings of disappointment and fear that the apartment wasn’t all we hoped it was, but we were already committed by the cost of moving in…so we wanted to make it as nice and livable as possible.

After the move-in we began focusing our attention on the yard. Now, I knew from the beginning that the yard would need some work and was willing to put some sweat equity and money in to it so we could really enjoy it all summer. The landlord had casually said it would be fine if we wanted to do some landscaping, etc. And, as I said, he said he would have the construction refuse removed. That being said, we ended up spending another $2500 on the yard, cleaning it of top soil refuse and doing some landscaping. Come time for our first rent to be due, with the landlord fresh back from his business trip, we promptly paid our first months rent. With the rent we sent a letter telling the landlord how happy we were with the neighborhood (which we still love-though it’s been hard being a renter here) and the apartment, though we did find it to be not quite in the condition we had initially thought. We described to him all of the work we did, listed out the cost, included receipts and gave him the OPTION to help pitch-in for the effort as we had undoubtedly improved his neglected property. Again I’ll say, we gave him the OPTION…did not demand anything. Also, we asked about the spaces he said he would clean out and requested he install a front door light. The entire tone of the letter was of happiness and excitement about our new home and looking forward to spending some years enjoying the investment. The letter we received in response a couple of days later was one of the most condescending, rude communications I have ever received in my life. I won’t go over it in detail, as I’ve already written an essay, but here are some choice quotes…

“honestly, it’s a rental”
“you say you hope to spend many years here. I remind you that you signed a one-year, as is lease”
“feel free to do what you like with the yard, I’m sure the next tenants will appreciate it”
“let me know if you are interested in purchasing the building” (