My husband and I really love our three bedroom upper duplex, and we get it for a really great price. We’ve lived here for almost three years. We couldn’t imagine moving right now. The problem is that our bad landlord — the property management company that could not care less about anything that we contact them about. We have to call five-to-eight times to get anything fixed.I can see on Google places that the landlord has terrible reviews, and terrible BBB reviews. But the other problem is that this is a huge company! They manage about a quarter of all the rental properties in my city, so I worry that if we handle this badly, we may lose a lot of housing opportunities.
What are your tips on dealing with landlords that just don’t care?
-hiimcailin
I would start by googling the “Tenants Bill of Rights” for your area. These usually contain details on your landlord’s obligations to you and specifics on your legal recourse if they are not met. If and when your landlord doesn’t respond to a maintenance request or other issue, email or fax them your Tenants Bill of Rights, and inform them that you will be withholding rent until the problem is resolved.
There’s also the slightly-less nuclear version, which is tell the landlord that if they don’t have time to deal with the problem, you can hire someone to do the repairs and then take the money out of the rent check (with bill attached). That usually only needs to happen once for them to get with the program.
Also, if you have to make multiple requests to fix a problem, make sure that you document the dates of the requests — this will help you if the landlord tries to deny that they were informed of the problem.
What are the ways YOU deal with a bad landlord?
Don’t tell a tenant to attempt in any way to fix a problem. In some situations you can run the risk of harm or death or even liability if you damage anything else.
This is what I do that now makes landlords tremble in their feet.
Get yourself a Legal Shield Membership ontarioelite.com and never enter into any commons without contract that is first reviews through Legal Shield. In Ontario the providor law firm is Mills & Mills and trust me. They are the “sharks that other lawyers fear”.
My landlord decided she was going to try and evict me so she can try and rent at a much higher price, tried using the eviction for “nephew” excuse. Didn’t work so tried illegal rent increase. That didn’t work so refused to make repairs such as furnace not working, water entering house from bad eves, and a serious mold problem.
In the end it didn’t cost me a dime and I had a very stern letter personally addressed to the landlord from Mills & Mills.
The end result, I now have a damage claim against the landlord for neglect of duty. A potential fraud charge against them and the CRA may be doing an audit while immigrations will be investigating this “nephew” was supose to be moving from India.
Last year a mechanic who damaged my car ended up paying out $370 by the time I was done with him.
I agree with registered letters, and learning the laws about deducting repair services off your rent. When it hits them in the bank account, they will start to care.