Landlord Issue

[BobombETA]

Me and my girlfriend have been renting the same apartment since September 2012. It's a 2 family house and the landlord lives below us. At first he seemed like a decent guy, but the past 6 months or so we've grown pretty tired about our living situation. Unfortunately we are stuck there until our lease expires in September 2014.

The best way for me to characterize our landlord, is he is like Clint Eastwood's character from Gran Torino. Old (early 60's), racist, and intolerant of his neighbors.

The issues:
- He leaves his dog (black lab) home during the day while he's at work (8am-2pm) and the thing howls literally the entire time he is gone. It's not as much an issue for me as I'm at work during those hours, but my girlfriend works a split shift and sometimes tries to catch up on sleep during that time. Needless to say it's impossible for her to get any rest, or have any quiet enjoyment while she's home.. We've asked him to find a solution for this and he just laughs it off and says his dog just misses him.

- He's a pot smoker and the smell fills our entire apartment. It's not an every day occurrence, but a couple times a week when I get home from work the whole apartment smells. I'm not against smoking pot, I just find the smell intrusive. We have not addressed this with him, and we're not sure how to approach him about it.

- Our lease says he's supposed to give us 24 hour notice before entry to our space, but he routinely ignores it. Usually it's for maintenance, which is fine, but one time he came up with a bucket and a sponge and asked if he could clean a spot on our carpet. OCD much? The apartment has wall to wall (cheap and thin) carpet, even in the kitchen, which is where the spot was. Of course there's going to be spots here and there.

We'd like to find a new place, but we don't want to have to pay 2 rents if we do.

Would any of our issues with him allow us to get out of the lease?
Is there a process we should start to document the issues?
Calling the police about the noise or pot smoke?

We also don't want to have to fight to get our security deposit back, and given his somewhat OCD nature, it's something I anticipate being a battle. He also has a history of going off on his neighbors, we've overheard him yelling and swearing at them.

We are completely respectful. No noise (I don't even have my guitar amps there out of respect), no pets, and we almost never have people over as it's not a very big space. We're mostly either at work or sleeping.

What would r3v do?

[flyboyx]

ok, you need to start documenting all of the incidents. once you have a small handful, you send him a certified letter as to why you are breaking the lease and the date you plan to move out. this is what you can use against him if he tries to take you to court. generally, judges side with the tenant if unless you do something egregious. i am pretty sure any judge will feel that a howling dog and breathing marijuana filled air are more than enough to get the hell out of there.

as far as your security deposit is concerned, you are probably fuckt! i highly doubt this guy will be giving that back without a fight. i would put language in the letter threatening him with a lawsuit if he doesn't return it, but that doesn't mean very much. i am pretty sure you will need to take him to court to get it. you probably need to chalk that up to a lost cause.

[Thizzelle]

just ask him if you can bounce early because A,B & C. If he says i'll try to stop, then give it a few. If nothing happens then call the cops. but first thing is communicate god damn it. For security deposit did you do a walkthrough and note everything before hand? if not, then you're fucked. When I moved out of my town house, my land lord thought it was cleaner then when I moved in LOL.

[ParsedOut]

Howling dog and pot smoke are more than enough leverage. Send him a letter outlining the reasons you need to leave and that unless they are resolved within a certain period of time (1 week?) that you'll be forced to break the lease and require your security deposit be returned minus any damages incurred. If he doesn't respond by fixing the issues, then take him to small claims for the security deposit (be sure to have ample evidence). He may try to bring you for breaking the lease, but he'd be an idiot and will lose. The biggest thing is to document every issue and take video evidence when possible, if that includes call the cops for the pot smoke...then do it. Oh yeah, I'm not a lawyer. Suggest talking to one if you want some fact based advice.

[Nick_S]

Poop in his sock drawer.

[evandael]

if you break the lease, i doubt you'll get the security deposit back.

landlords suck.

[ainadude]

For security deposit did you do a walkthrough and note everything before hand? if not, then you're fucked.

Check the New York State landlord/tenant code (if it's not available online you can probably find a copy at your local library). If New York is anything like Hawaii (which is also a blue state), the code will generally favor the tenant. To wit, if you're landlord did NOT do a walkthrough prior to your move-in and provide you a copy of that record when you moved it, burden of proof is exclusively on him to prove damage, wear & tear, missing items, etc. In Hawaii, a landlord has two weeks (or 15 days, I don't recall which) to return security deposit to a tenant and must provide documentation in order to retain any or all of that security deposit. Without a walkthrough record, he is on VERY thin ground to retain deposit and has a small time window in which to act.

Meanwhile, the dog issue and his lack of respect for 24-hour notice (a MAJOR privacy issue with respect to tenants) are both issues in your favor. As others have suggested, keep a log of his unannounced visits and make note of your complaints about the dog noise (as well as his lack of action or even token concern). Re the dog, if you wanna go nuclear, call animal control or even the cops -- they respond to those kind of complaints on a daily basis.

Again, check your landlord/tenant code. If it's anything like Hawaii's, you're on firm legal footing. That's the good news. The bad news is, if push comes to shove you will have to take your landlord to small-claims court (where you will almost certainly prevail) to get your security deposit back. Unless your landlord can make a case that you've been anything other than responsible -- and it sounds like the two of you have been, plus the burden of proof is likely to be on him -- he'll have to return your full deposit and the judge may have some authority to punish him further (i.e. require him to return some of the rent you've paid).

Sounds like you're doing everything right so far ... do a little research and I think you'll be fine. Good luck.

P.S. I'm a landlord myself and have to take this kind of thing seriously.

[BobombETA]

ok, you need to start documenting all of the incidents. once you have a small handful, you send him a certified letter as to why you are breaking the lease and the date you plan to move out. this is what you can use against him if he tries to take you to court. generally, judges side with the tenant if unless you do something egregious. i am pretty sure any judge will feel that a howling dog and breathing marijuana filled air are more than enough to get the hell out of there.

as far as your security deposit is concerned, you are probably fuckt! i highly doubt this guy will be giving that back without a fight. i would put language in the letter threatening him with a lawsuit if he doesn't return it, but that doesn't mean very much. i am pretty sure you will need to take him to court to get it. you probably need to chalk that up to a lost cause.

We will start a log of the incidents, and the next time he's smoking I'll knock on his door.

just ask him if you can bounce early because A,B & C. If he says i'll try to stop, then give it a few. If nothing happens then call the cops. but first thing is communicate god damn it. For security deposit did you do a walkthrough and note everything before hand? if not, then you're fucked. When I moved out of my town house, my land lord thought it was cleaner then when I moved in LOL.

We didn't do a walkthrough, so that's one thing in our favor.

Howling dog and pot smoke are more than enough leverage. Send him a letter outlining the reasons you need to leave and that unless they are resolved within a certain period of time (1 week?) that you'll be forced to break the lease and require your security deposit be returned minus any damages incurred. If he doesn't respond by fixing the issues, then take him to small claims for the security deposit (be sure to have ample evidence). He may try to bring you for breaking the lease, but he'd be an idiot and will lose. The biggest thing is to document every issue and take video evidence when possible, if that includes call the cops for the pot smoke...then do it. Oh yeah, I'm not a lawyer. Suggest talking to one if you want some fact based advice.

I'll try to take a video of the dog barking noise, I figured the time of day made a noise complaint lose its merit.

Poop in his sock drawer.

If he doesn't play nice I have a 100 watt tube amp that shakes the windows when the volume is on 3. Maybe I'll take up the drums too.

if you break the lease, i doubt you'll get the security deposit back.

landlords suck.

Indeed. Saving for a down payment on a house as we speak.

Check the New York State landlord/tenant code (if it's not available online you can probably find a copy at your local library). If New York is anything like Hawaii (which is also a blue state), the code will generally favor the tenant. To wit, if you're landlord did NOT do a walkthrough prior to your move-in and provide you a copy of that record when you moved it, burden of proof is exclusively on him to prove damage, wear & tear, missing items, etc. In Hawaii, a landlord has two weeks (or 15 days, I don't recall which) to return security deposit to a tenant and must provide documentation in order to retain any or all of that security deposit. Without a walkthrough record, he is on VERY thin ground to retain deposit and has a small time window in which to act.

Meanwhile, the dog issue and his lack of respect for 24-hour notice (a MAJOR privacy issue with respect to tenants) are both issues in your favor. As others have suggested, keep a log of his unannounced visits and make note of your complaints about the dog noise (as well as his lack of action or even token concern). Re the dog, if you wanna go nuclear, call animal control or even the cops -- they respond to those kind of complaints on a daily basis.

Again, check your landlord/tenant code. If it's anything like Hawaii's, you're on firm legal footing. That's the good news. The bad news is, if push comes to shove you will have to take your landlord to small-claims court (where you will almost certainly prevail) to get your security deposit back. Unless your landlord can make a case that you've been anything other than responsible -- and it sounds like the two of you have been, plus the burden of proof is likely to be on him -- he'll have to return your full deposit and the judge may have some authority to punish him further (i.e. require him to return some of the rent you've paid).

Sounds like you're doing everything right so far ... do a little research and I think you'll be fine. Good luck.

P.S. I'm a landlord myself and have to take this kind of thing seriously.

I found the "Tenants Rights Guide" on the attorney general's website. I'll be reviewing it. Thank you.

[mrsleeve]

. For security deposit did you do a walkthrough and note everything before hand? if not, then you're fucked. When I moved out of my town house, my land lord thought it was cleaner then when I moved in LOL.

In our area rents are getting outta hand, and the security's are in many cases double a months rent. And looked at as FREE MONEY. Even if the place is in better condition than when you moved in and can document that fact, many of the cash strapped owners have either spent the security, or want to keep it anyway............

[ainadude]

Addendum: I didn't properly explain the two-week period following the end of the lease. In Hawaii landlord/tenant code (which I'm told used the California code as a template), the landlord has two weeks (or 15 days) to provide clear explanation, in writing, to the tenant why some or all of his/her deposit will not be returned. The key point is that if the landlord does NOT respond within this period and provide to tenant a clear accounting, ALL SECURITY DEPOSIT FUNDS MUST BE RETURNED TO TENANT. Again, you may have to go to small-claims to get your money but, in general the law is overwhelmingly on your side and burden of proof is typically entirely on the landlord. If he/she fails to perform due diligence, he or she is screwed, not you. Just be sure to get acknowledgement that you have returned any and all keys to the unit upon surrender of the property (i.e. end of the lease period) -- failure to do so can be a sticking point that works against you, as the landlord can argue tenant has failed to fulfill his/her part of the agreement. Thing is, if you stick to the letter of the law and your landlord doesn't -- frankly, in almost any way, it's a slam dunk for you and your girlfriend in court.

Meanwhile, there are frequently conditions in any state code in which a tenant may legally break a lease before term is up. Depending on New York's, the scenarios you describe may meet one or more of these conditions.

Hope this helps.

[ParsedOut]

I'll try to take a video of the dog barking noise, I figured the time of day made a noise complaint lose its merit.

Time of day doesn't matter when it comes to excessive and disturbing noise.

[decay]

Poop in his sock drawer.

that requires access to his unit.

alternative solution: upperdeck the toilet.

[flyboyx]

set your amp so the speaker points directly into the floor. late at night, hook up a base guitar and shoot lots of really low rumbling sounds though the floor at him. just kidding. don't give the guy any ammunition against you.

[AdironRider]

Im a landlord myself.

1st, the howling dog is going to do nothing on getting out of your lease. I assume he had it when you moved in. You need to just let this one go. If the dog is making noise between the hours you say he is, its also a moot issue as those are normal waking hours of the day. No judge is going to be like oh she cant take naps, youre free to break the lease.

2nd, the 24 hour notice does not apply to maintenance depending on your state. While the spot on the carpet is a bit much, landlords don't have to wait 24 hours if something is broken and needs to be fixed. Its not like hes just popping in to chill. If anything, Id appreciate a landlord that gives a shit, lots of landlords just collect checks and do nothing. It sounds like he does give notice before physically entering your apartment, so again, depending on the state, no laws are being broken.

3rd, you sound young. Get your shit together and buy your own place, then you don't have to deal with it, otherwise, welcome to renting and get used to it, these are not big deal issues.

4th, the smell of pot smoke? Seriously?

[AdironRider]

Time of day doesn't matter when it comes to excessive and disturbing noise.

A dog barking is not going to be considered excessive or disturbing in the eyes of the law during the hours stated.