My boyfriend and I have had nothing but issues since I moved into our apartment. We are going on our fourth month. I am ready to break my lease because it is causing a lot of strain in our relationship. It started with small things such as not being able to move in due to the apartment not being clean and completely painted so we couldn't move in on our moving date. Instead we moved all our things in late. Luckily, our past landlord was understanding. Eventually we had to move into the one finished room and lived out of it for about a week until everything was painted.
The real first issue was door locks not working so the landlord had them fixed.
There was a broken tile in the kitchen when we moved in that had to be replaced because it was sharp and dangerous. It was replaced with a different color tile and different grout (which is an eyesore, but i just wanted it to be safe) and it took about 3 weeks that we couldn't use our kitchen.
3 weeks in a storm ripped off our storm door, maintenance came and fixed it because they were improperly installed and did not close all the way.
This is about the time (Thanksgiving) we found mice in the kitchen drawers (walls), found out the (gas) oven didn't work properly, and that one of our kitchen walls had openings to the outside. Luckily I only stored tools and candles in those kitchen drawers. The mice ate about 100$ worth of candles. When we pulled out the kitchen drawers to get down mouse traps, we found there were just exposed planks of wood (with large openings to the outside). Apperently the mice in the walls were infested with fleas because my cat climbed in the hole for a minute and when I pulled her out you could see her covered. So we treated the house just in case and the cat of course.
Maintenance sort of fixed the other issues.
Our kitchen and bathroom sinks were found to be leaking after the 4th week in. Which were promptly fixed and found to be leaking again, and fixed again, and after the third time maintenance came the sinks appeared to be fixed. This took a several weeks of maintenance in and out.
After that there was a continuous leak for a few weeks in the bathroom that the source could not be located. It took about four weeks for it to be found that the roof had been leaking.
Now it's been somewhat quiet for a week until this morning when I was about to make muffins. I pulled my pans out of the cupboard and found a few termites in the pan. They were The little itty bitty (smaller than a crumb) clear ones. Yuck! They are probably scurrying about on all my dishes and I've not seen them until now in the bright day light!
As an aside, I am concerned about the quality of our water. This lot is zoned as a business and I am unsure of regulations on that (it was a restaurant about 15 years ago). The water has a distinct metallic taste and smell. I'm not sure of how drinking water requirements apply to us.
I am frustrated. This is not a complete list of issues, just the major ones. I don't want to keep having my life interrupted with weekly maintenance visits or being concerned about what issues will arise next. It is causing us to live in a very tense environment. I am limited in space already and now unable to use drawers in my kitchen for fear that the mice will return and eat my candles again (if they ever left), I don't like to use the space under either my bathroom or kitchen sink, because I fear mold could be under the wooden boards and contaminate my towels or catfood or anything else I'd like to put there, and now I'm worried I can't use any of my cabinets (or dry food in cardboard will have to be thrown away) because of the termites.
My landlord is quite nice and promt to have maintenance come in, but he should not have rented out an apartment that wasn't going to be ready. I am not even sure it is legal for this to be apartments. I am sure that he was aware of many of these issues before we moved in. But i know other issues are things that just come up. Can I get out of my lease? I can't handle being displaced on a weekly basis. Is there a nice way of requesting our deposit back and finding a new place? Please help!
The real first issue was door locks not working so the landlord had them fixed.
There was a broken tile in the kitchen when we moved in that had to be replaced because it was sharp and dangerous. It was replaced with a different color tile and different grout (which is an eyesore, but i just wanted it to be safe) and it took about 3 weeks that we couldn't use our kitchen.
3 weeks in a storm ripped off our storm door, maintenance came and fixed it because they were improperly installed and did not close all the way.
This is about the time (Thanksgiving) we found mice in the kitchen drawers (walls), found out the (gas) oven didn't work properly, and that one of our kitchen walls had openings to the outside. Luckily I only stored tools and candles in those kitchen drawers. The mice ate about 100$ worth of candles. When we pulled out the kitchen drawers to get down mouse traps, we found there were just exposed planks of wood (with large openings to the outside). Apperently the mice in the walls were infested with fleas because my cat climbed in the hole for a minute and when I pulled her out you could see her covered. So we treated the house just in case and the cat of course.
Maintenance sort of fixed the other issues.
Our kitchen and bathroom sinks were found to be leaking after the 4th week in. Which were promptly fixed and found to be leaking again, and fixed again, and after the third time maintenance came the sinks appeared to be fixed. This took a several weeks of maintenance in and out.
After that there was a continuous leak for a few weeks in the bathroom that the source could not be located. It took about four weeks for it to be found that the roof had been leaking.
Now it's been somewhat quiet for a week until this morning when I was about to make muffins. I pulled my pans out of the cupboard and found a few termites in the pan. They were The little itty bitty (smaller than a crumb) clear ones. Yuck! They are probably scurrying about on all my dishes and I've not seen them until now in the bright day light!
As an aside, I am concerned about the quality of our water. This lot is zoned as a business and I am unsure of regulations on that (it was a restaurant about 15 years ago). The water has a distinct metallic taste and smell. I'm not sure of how drinking water requirements apply to us.
I am frustrated. This is not a complete list of issues, just the major ones. I don't want to keep having my life interrupted with weekly maintenance visits or being concerned about what issues will arise next. It is causing us to live in a very tense environment. I am limited in space already and now unable to use drawers in my kitchen for fear that the mice will return and eat my candles again (if they ever left), I don't like to use the space under either my bathroom or kitchen sink, because I fear mold could be under the wooden boards and contaminate my towels or catfood or anything else I'd like to put there, and now I'm worried I can't use any of my cabinets (or dry food in cardboard will have to be thrown away) because of the termites.
My landlord is quite nice and promt to have maintenance come in, but he should not have rented out an apartment that wasn't going to be ready. I am not even sure it is legal for this to be apartments. I am sure that he was aware of many of these issues before we moved in. But i know other issues are things that just come up. Can I get out of my lease? I can't handle being displaced on a weekly basis. Is there a nice way of requesting our deposit back and finding a new place? Please help!
