lease laws
Do any of my Vox friends know if there is a law having to do with a landlord giving a specific amount of notice to a renter about them doing work to the house they are renting? Our landlord called us the night before a crew replaced the roof on the house. And they were working on the roof for a week, banging away while my wife was trying to work in her home office. Also, they did not cover our things inside the garage, so all the debris fell into all of our things. On top of all that, the guys dropped something on our washer and broke the front of it, and also stole a few cell phones I had sitting in a box in the garage.
The roofing company is going to fix the washer - but our landlord isn't helping us get that done, which is bullshit.
The phones are just gone. I seriously doubt anyone will do a darn thing about that. I don't need them, but I was going to give them to a family member who could use them.
It's the "no notice" of the roofing work that really irks me.
I'm about to call the landlord and tell them we're moving out. And I'd like to have some firepower to bring up, if they don't want to work with us on getting out of the lease two months early. I think we have been more than reasonable in dealing with these things, and I hope the landlord is too, but I'd like to know if I have legal grounds to get out of this lease if she did not give us 24 hours notice of work to be done to the house.
Comments
S,
First, I have to say that I was a bit perturbed that you didn't slam those bitter little liberals who were upset in your other thread because you have a better life than they do.
Now about your present problem: Look, this is why everyone should rent condos.
Since you didn't, you have the same rights as any homeowner - if you didn't want them working on your place, you could have told them to leave and if they didn't, you could have called the police - which is what you should do about the cell phones. You won't get anywhere, but they'll know it's troublesome to mess with you.
Now you can threaten the landlord with a lawsuit because she failed to take proper precautions to safeguard your property. If she's not too experienced, that should rattle her pretty good. In a civil suit, you only need a preponderance of the evidence, and judges are normally sympathetic, especially when you'd gotten no notice.
And don't bother to thank me, just level a liberal and I'll be more than compensated.
If it doesn't address this specifically, standard practice is 24 hours notice unless it is an emergency. There should be something in the lease about the landlord's right to enter the property (or in this case the agent of the landlord which the creepy roofing crew technically is). This would also apply to showing the property.
You may want to find out when the roofers were scheduled. I highly doubt she called the roofers the day before and then called you that evening to tell you they would be there in the morning.
I don't know that her breech is enough to get you out of the lease, especially since it would surely come out that you were in the process of buying a home when this happened. Typically you would need to prove that living in the house was no longer safe or that she had made a nuisance of herself.
This is still American. And as such you have a right to "happiness" which is really another way of saying to buy a home of your own and not be subject to a crazy landlord. You are giving her two months to find a tenant. At most your really just risk the loss of your security deposit. She can't sit around and not try and find a tenant.