My landlords wife yelled at the plumber for sealing our bathroom wall back up when the shower spigot was still leaking, and then her husband comes in and says “honey stop we don’t need to pay to fix the valve if we don’t have to”. So my shower still leaks and they really fixed nothing because they didn’t want to spend $1000 (less than half our rent) to redo the shower.
Right. The entire reason they purchased an investment property is because they’re thinking about the future. But there are slum lords that’ll invest the least possible money and milk it for everything they can, then just condemn the place and move on.
Hey, that is my landlord. He spun a story to my wife when we rented about having caught illegal subletting in the house we rent and that is why he padlocked the finished basement and attic, but the longer we have been here the more we are pretty sure there is a serious mold infestation in both that should make the house unlivable and he just wants to charge us a grand a month until we die.
The house needs serious work, the floors are deforming, there is cracks along door frames and buckles in the plaster from where the structure is slowly collapsing. Unfortunately, the rent is so high that we cannot afford to escape. I am wholeheartedly planning on leaving him with code enforcement coming in and dropping a bunch of fines on him when we go to leave.
FYI, pad locks are seriously easy to defeat without breaking the lock. A few minutes of YouTube videos, an aluminum can, and scissors are all you need to get in. If you’re worried about mold, I’d strongly advise that, or an official inspection.
Thanks for the advice. I am working on it from the other, stronger, angle. Getting a better job so I can afford to get out of here and into something better while I find a house for myself. I am well aware of the ease a padlock can be defeated. I will likely pick them when I find new employment as right now I don’t want to risk retribution. It’s illegal, but I cannot afford to fight him. He also put some shady (illegal) clauses in the lease trying to circumvent the eviction laws, which again, I cannot fight if he decided to exercise them. We moved here in an emergency, we don’t want to move out in one as well.
Yep, picking is very easy to learn too, but requires tools. Also, you will do minor damage to the pins over time, because the metal of the picks is harder than the brass pins, so scratches will be left. Put if you’re only doing it once, it won’t be an issue.
My old landlord ignored a water mark hole in the ceiling below the bathroom until the leak got to the point they had to tear out all the drywall in the bathroom, and probably should have replaced all the framing too.
(It was there when we moved in, and we mentioned when we noticed it getting bigger)
So no. Unless they are a “professional” landlord they tend to not act on issues until it costs them more than early action would have. All while making life a pain in the ass for the tenant.
It’s hard to know what terms OP used correctly, but sounds like maybe the bath spigot is leaking a bit while the shower is on. If that’s the case, it wouldn’t cause damage to not fix, the shower water pressure would just suffer. And AFAIK, you wouldn’t typically need access to inside the wall, unless they did something stupid and tiled in a way that you can’t access the diverter stem nut to replace it.
IANAP, just DIY and have had to replace shower stems due to failing gaskets
I was renting a duplex and the basement would flood any pretty often when I used the washing machine or spent too long doing the dishes. I figured this was important to fix, so called the property manager right away. They didn’t see too worried. They eventually fixed it, it kept happening, and they would eventually fix it, but my urgency to call matched their urgency to fix it, which was pretty low. I didn’t have anything of value in the basement, so I didn’t care too much. Eventually it got to the point where they needed to fix the actual problem so this would stop. They spent around $10k to replace the pipe from the house to the road… but that didn’t fix the problem. What they really needed to do was fix the pipe that went under the road. Because the spent so long dragging their feet, the city had recently replaced the road and wouldn’t let anyone dig it up for 5 years. So the landlords were stuck having rotorooter proactively come up to clear out the pipes every few weeks for the next 5 years, and then who knows how much it cost them for the actual fix. I think they lost money on me living there.
My landlords wife yelled at the plumber for sealing our bathroom wall back up when the shower spigot was still leaking, and then her husband comes in and says “honey stop we don’t need to pay to fix the valve if we don’t have to”. So my shower still leaks and they really fixed nothing because they didn’t want to spend $1000 (less than half our rent) to redo the shower.
Wouldn’t the leak cause more damage to their property over time?
Yes, but here you are expecting a landlord to actually think about the future.
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Right. The entire reason they purchased an investment property is because they’re thinking about the future. But there are slum lords that’ll invest the least possible money and milk it for everything they can, then just condemn the place and move on.
Hey, that is my landlord. He spun a story to my wife when we rented about having caught illegal subletting in the house we rent and that is why he padlocked the finished basement and attic, but the longer we have been here the more we are pretty sure there is a serious mold infestation in both that should make the house unlivable and he just wants to charge us a grand a month until we die.
The house needs serious work, the floors are deforming, there is cracks along door frames and buckles in the plaster from where the structure is slowly collapsing. Unfortunately, the rent is so high that we cannot afford to escape. I am wholeheartedly planning on leaving him with code enforcement coming in and dropping a bunch of fines on him when we go to leave.
FYI, pad locks are seriously easy to defeat without breaking the lock. A few minutes of YouTube videos, an aluminum can, and scissors are all you need to get in. If you’re worried about mold, I’d strongly advise that, or an official inspection.
Thanks for the advice. I am working on it from the other, stronger, angle. Getting a better job so I can afford to get out of here and into something better while I find a house for myself. I am well aware of the ease a padlock can be defeated. I will likely pick them when I find new employment as right now I don’t want to risk retribution. It’s illegal, but I cannot afford to fight him. He also put some shady (illegal) clauses in the lease trying to circumvent the eviction laws, which again, I cannot fight if he decided to exercise them. We moved here in an emergency, we don’t want to move out in one as well.
Yeah shims are great for cheap locks. I learned how to pick a 5 pin lock in a few hours, so you can always do that too if the shim won’t fit.
Yep, picking is very easy to learn too, but requires tools. Also, you will do minor damage to the pins over time, because the metal of the picks is harder than the brass pins, so scratches will be left. Put if you’re only doing it once, it won’t be an issue.
My old landlord ignored a water mark hole in the ceiling below the bathroom until the leak got to the point they had to tear out all the drywall in the bathroom, and probably should have replaced all the framing too.
(It was there when we moved in, and we mentioned when we noticed it getting bigger)
So no. Unless they are a “professional” landlord they tend to not act on issues until it costs them more than early action would have. All while making life a pain in the ass for the tenant.
It’s hard to know what terms OP used correctly, but sounds like maybe the bath spigot is leaking a bit while the shower is on. If that’s the case, it wouldn’t cause damage to not fix, the shower water pressure would just suffer. And AFAIK, you wouldn’t typically need access to inside the wall, unless they did something stupid and tiled in a way that you can’t access the diverter stem nut to replace it.
IANAP, just DIY and have had to replace shower stems due to failing gaskets
I was renting a duplex and the basement would flood any pretty often when I used the washing machine or spent too long doing the dishes. I figured this was important to fix, so called the property manager right away. They didn’t see too worried. They eventually fixed it, it kept happening, and they would eventually fix it, but my urgency to call matched their urgency to fix it, which was pretty low. I didn’t have anything of value in the basement, so I didn’t care too much. Eventually it got to the point where they needed to fix the actual problem so this would stop. They spent around $10k to replace the pipe from the house to the road… but that didn’t fix the problem. What they really needed to do was fix the pipe that went under the road. Because the spent so long dragging their feet, the city had recently replaced the road and wouldn’t let anyone dig it up for 5 years. So the landlords were stuck having rotorooter proactively come up to clear out the pipes every few weeks for the next 5 years, and then who knows how much it cost them for the actual fix. I think they lost money on me living there.