My partner and I and our twin 3 year old boys moved into a rental home last thanksgiving. The house was presented as a 3 bedroom two bathroom plus garage family home in good condition. The backyard looked like it needed some work but the property manager said that unfortunately the previous tenant had large dogs.
After moving in the thin veneer wore off and we realised that it had been fixed up to withstand a look around but when you lived in the place the wheels started to fall off.
* The door handles started falling off and we realised that a lot of the bedroom door handles were exterior door handles that could be locked from inside by a child and we could not get in to them.
* Within the first week the front of the dishwasher fell off.
* The garage has a serious termite damage and is not weatherproof and so is useless.
* Within weeks we started having serious plumbing issues - backing up and overflowing (after me yelling at them on the phone they did get a plumber out).
*THe sink in the basins stopper became inoperable.
* They had used plaster around the faucet and levers for the bath and this slowly detoriated with moisture to where the plaster perished and there was a
* You can't lock some of the windows and you can't open the rest.
* The heating was somehow tied in with a light switch in the kitchen and an exterior sensor light ie if the switch was in a certain position and the sensor light was on, the heating would not work. Eventually the heating stopped working altogether.
* The electrics deteriorated to the point where we started getting shocks from the stove.
*The front screen lock doesn't work, the door handle falls off.
We immediately took photos and wrote letters. Fast forward seven months and 2 more property managers and countless emails and the landlord forced us to have the tradesmen come on the weekends (this was better the evening hours offered originally) As my sons are developmentally delayed we had no choice but to try to take them out for time the tradesmen were in the house which was. After all this work by the tradesman (the owners handyman ex husband and an electrician the bathroom is still unusable. I asked for a plumber to do the work but was told that the owner had the right to chose whoever she wanted to do the work. After he worked on the shower one of the levers came off. After working on the fixtures on the bath her had to have two goes at installing a stopper and then the other night while I was filling the tub while my boys were in the bath the faucet shot off narowly missing one of them so now the bath is not operable either.
All this time I have been paying full rent for a substandard property and waiting seven months for the repairs to be even attempted. Do I have any recourse to ask for either a rent reduction or a refund for a portion of the rent?
What are my rights with regards to them insisting on someone who does not have the skills necessary to carry out the repairs?
Any advice would be appreciated
Thank you
After moving in the thin veneer wore off and we realised that it had been fixed up to withstand a look around but when you lived in the place the wheels started to fall off.
* The door handles started falling off and we realised that a lot of the bedroom door handles were exterior door handles that could be locked from inside by a child and we could not get in to them.
* Within the first week the front of the dishwasher fell off.
* The garage has a serious termite damage and is not weatherproof and so is useless.
* Within weeks we started having serious plumbing issues - backing up and overflowing (after me yelling at them on the phone they did get a plumber out).
*THe sink in the basins stopper became inoperable.
* They had used plaster around the faucet and levers for the bath and this slowly detoriated with moisture to where the plaster perished and there was a
* You can't lock some of the windows and you can't open the rest.
* The heating was somehow tied in with a light switch in the kitchen and an exterior sensor light ie if the switch was in a certain position and the sensor light was on, the heating would not work. Eventually the heating stopped working altogether.
* The electrics deteriorated to the point where we started getting shocks from the stove.
*The front screen lock doesn't work, the door handle falls off.
We immediately took photos and wrote letters. Fast forward seven months and 2 more property managers and countless emails and the landlord forced us to have the tradesmen come on the weekends (this was better the evening hours offered originally) As my sons are developmentally delayed we had no choice but to try to take them out for time the tradesmen were in the house which was. After all this work by the tradesman (the owners handyman ex husband and an electrician the bathroom is still unusable. I asked for a plumber to do the work but was told that the owner had the right to chose whoever she wanted to do the work. After he worked on the shower one of the levers came off. After working on the fixtures on the bath her had to have two goes at installing a stopper and then the other night while I was filling the tub while my boys were in the bath the faucet shot off narowly missing one of them so now the bath is not operable either.
All this time I have been paying full rent for a substandard property and waiting seven months for the repairs to be even attempted. Do I have any recourse to ask for either a rent reduction or a refund for a portion of the rent?
What are my rights with regards to them insisting on someone who does not have the skills necessary to carry out the repairs?
Any advice would be appreciated
Thank you
