This is going to be a long post so please bear with us. Trying to provide as much information as we can to garner a proper response.
We currently reside in a single family home that we have rented for the past three years. Up until last month we were under direct dealings with the landlord, upon starting our new term he switched us over to a property management group and now things have gotten tough. For starters we were promised that our lease terms would not change if we signed a new one year lease with the management company. We have that in writing from the management company, they state that the only changes to our lease would be the amount of rent (it went up $25) and that we would contact them for any issues and regarding payment. We received a packet from them a few weeks later that we were supposed to fill out and send back "so they can have us on file". Keep in mind we were already told in writing the terms would remain the same. The papers they sent us were apparently a trick to get us to agree to new terms and being as trusting as we are, we signed the papers without hesitation. We thought we were just giving them our info and agreeing to another year under the same terms, little did we know we were agreeing to new terms that were not made clear to us until after we signed. That being said we are being harassed daily with emails, phone calls and letters over terms that aren't in our original lease.
So we just signed a year lease with them last month, even though we aren't really bound to the terms they tricked us into, we have complied fully to their wishes as we have always been and will always be good tenants. For the past three years we had built what we thought was a decent relationship with the landlord. We fixed things for him free of charge to help him out, we renovated half of the house at our cost just to make it more livable for us. New floors in a few rooms, refaced cabinets, new fixtures, entire house professionally painted. Again all at our expense and we were totally fine with that. The house was in need of some love and we have the skillset to provide it, the landlord WAS a good guy so we had no problem helping him out either.
Our relationship has changed though since the property management group took over. They manage two other homes (one on each side of ours) for him and they aren't happy with the amount of rent we pay. They flat out told us we don't pay enough rent, though they have never been in our house. Our house doesn't suck, but its not nearly as nice as the other two. We have one bedroom as opposed to two, we have multiple code violations (I'll get to that later) and up until recently we had a massive mouse problem. The neighbors pay $200 more than we do, but they also have newly renovated homes with two bedrooms and brand new everything. The landlord, when he was still being a decent person, told the management company no on the rent increase. He told them that the house we have isn't renovated like the others, has some issues and the electric system for the well and septic is on our meter, so we foot the bill for all three properties.
Ever since that, things have gone downhill and they have all been trying to bully us out. We had an issue with parking as our new neighbors found it funny to park two inches from our door and also block us in. We asked about having that remedied and it started a firestorm. We also had a few maintenance requests that we needed fixed and that just made things worse. In the past we had taken care of things ourselves but we had been told not to contact the landlord and to direct all issues to the management group. We had a few squirrels get trapped in our furnace, and that was a pricey fix. Also had pest control come out to try and fix the mouse issue and patch up some things outside to keep animals out. A week or two later we get birds stuck in the duct work, which we just removed ourselves trying to be nice and save the guy from paying again for the same issue.
Well the landlord clearly has money on the brain and since we aren't fixing things for him any more, its costing him money to maintain this house. Our kitchen floods when the water hose outside is used so we asked for that to be repaired, its been a problem for three years and he's never fixed it. We let it slide as we used to have a little respect for the guy. Putting in a request for that must have been the last straw as we were asked to leave today. We don't do anything wrong, we have never violated our lease, in three years we have never been a day late on rent, we are great tenants and have drastically improved the house we live in.
The landlord is having the new management group send us constant emails, call constantly and leave letters on the door for no reason. Got a letter yesterday that said "pay or quit" regarding my rent. My rent however was already paid, I was not late at all and they fessed up to that today. Its like they have letters and actions on hold just waiting for us to do anything wrong. My lease says absolutely nothing about my vehicles, but I've been threatened with eviction for having an expired county sticker. That was quickly resolved as I simply hadn't made it down to the county building.
Anyway there is a bunch of stuff wrong with the house and its going to be expensive to repair. Our plumbing is not up to code, we have an illegal propane installation and we have water leaks everywhere. Not willing to fix it ourselves we have kindly asked for the repairs to be made. Ever since then we have been harassed to the point where we don't have a day without an threatening phone call, email or letter taped to the door. It's all over money that the landlord doesn't want to spend to maintain his house and he's attempting to bully us into leaving so he doesn't have to make repairs. They know there is nothing they can do to force us out legally as we have done nothing wrong, so they are turning to intimidation and harassment to try and force us out on our own.
We got an email saying the landlord "was tired of dealing with us" and they "we aren't the type of tenants he desires, we need to be more like our neighbors". By our neighbors he means the ones who have no maintenance issues and pay more in rent. Is that considered some form of discrimination? What he's doing seems to fall under landlord retaliation but we don't really know what the terms of anything like that mean or what we can do about it. He wants us out but wont pay us a dime, we cant really afford to pack up and move just because he no longer likes us. Moving is expensive and it takes time to find a new place, we simply didn't plan on moving and don't have the resources to disappear in a few days. We have in writing that he wants us to leave because we aren't the type of tenants he wants. Funny he had no issues until we asked for things to be fixed and stopped doing work ourselves. Our neighbors have lease violations like crazy all over their properties but they get a free pass. We have zero violations and we are getting bullied to the point of mental meltdown.
Anyhow we don't know how to handle it or where to turn. We're not going to leave for free at our expense to please the landlord so he can avoid spending money. Obviously he cant evict us or he would have done so already. He's basically begging us to leave but wont offer any compensation so we can afford to do so. All of this comes on the heels of us just paying rent conveniently, so we have already paid in advance for this month. We don't see any benefit in moving out simply because he changed his mind about liking us and got a little greedy. We'd like to live out the remainder of our lease but the harassment and bullying wont cease, it will likely continue until we throw in the towel and leave. We can not afford to move and we were not planning on moving can we ask for a landlord buyout?
Does anyone have any advice or input on this situation. We'd understand his stance if we had done anything wrong but we haven't, we've been really good to him and have taken very good care of the property.
We currently reside in a single family home that we have rented for the past three years. Up until last month we were under direct dealings with the landlord, upon starting our new term he switched us over to a property management group and now things have gotten tough. For starters we were promised that our lease terms would not change if we signed a new one year lease with the management company. We have that in writing from the management company, they state that the only changes to our lease would be the amount of rent (it went up $25) and that we would contact them for any issues and regarding payment. We received a packet from them a few weeks later that we were supposed to fill out and send back "so they can have us on file". Keep in mind we were already told in writing the terms would remain the same. The papers they sent us were apparently a trick to get us to agree to new terms and being as trusting as we are, we signed the papers without hesitation. We thought we were just giving them our info and agreeing to another year under the same terms, little did we know we were agreeing to new terms that were not made clear to us until after we signed. That being said we are being harassed daily with emails, phone calls and letters over terms that aren't in our original lease.
So we just signed a year lease with them last month, even though we aren't really bound to the terms they tricked us into, we have complied fully to their wishes as we have always been and will always be good tenants. For the past three years we had built what we thought was a decent relationship with the landlord. We fixed things for him free of charge to help him out, we renovated half of the house at our cost just to make it more livable for us. New floors in a few rooms, refaced cabinets, new fixtures, entire house professionally painted. Again all at our expense and we were totally fine with that. The house was in need of some love and we have the skillset to provide it, the landlord WAS a good guy so we had no problem helping him out either.
Our relationship has changed though since the property management group took over. They manage two other homes (one on each side of ours) for him and they aren't happy with the amount of rent we pay. They flat out told us we don't pay enough rent, though they have never been in our house. Our house doesn't suck, but its not nearly as nice as the other two. We have one bedroom as opposed to two, we have multiple code violations (I'll get to that later) and up until recently we had a massive mouse problem. The neighbors pay $200 more than we do, but they also have newly renovated homes with two bedrooms and brand new everything. The landlord, when he was still being a decent person, told the management company no on the rent increase. He told them that the house we have isn't renovated like the others, has some issues and the electric system for the well and septic is on our meter, so we foot the bill for all three properties.
Ever since that, things have gone downhill and they have all been trying to bully us out. We had an issue with parking as our new neighbors found it funny to park two inches from our door and also block us in. We asked about having that remedied and it started a firestorm. We also had a few maintenance requests that we needed fixed and that just made things worse. In the past we had taken care of things ourselves but we had been told not to contact the landlord and to direct all issues to the management group. We had a few squirrels get trapped in our furnace, and that was a pricey fix. Also had pest control come out to try and fix the mouse issue and patch up some things outside to keep animals out. A week or two later we get birds stuck in the duct work, which we just removed ourselves trying to be nice and save the guy from paying again for the same issue.
Well the landlord clearly has money on the brain and since we aren't fixing things for him any more, its costing him money to maintain this house. Our kitchen floods when the water hose outside is used so we asked for that to be repaired, its been a problem for three years and he's never fixed it. We let it slide as we used to have a little respect for the guy. Putting in a request for that must have been the last straw as we were asked to leave today. We don't do anything wrong, we have never violated our lease, in three years we have never been a day late on rent, we are great tenants and have drastically improved the house we live in.
The landlord is having the new management group send us constant emails, call constantly and leave letters on the door for no reason. Got a letter yesterday that said "pay or quit" regarding my rent. My rent however was already paid, I was not late at all and they fessed up to that today. Its like they have letters and actions on hold just waiting for us to do anything wrong. My lease says absolutely nothing about my vehicles, but I've been threatened with eviction for having an expired county sticker. That was quickly resolved as I simply hadn't made it down to the county building.
Anyway there is a bunch of stuff wrong with the house and its going to be expensive to repair. Our plumbing is not up to code, we have an illegal propane installation and we have water leaks everywhere. Not willing to fix it ourselves we have kindly asked for the repairs to be made. Ever since then we have been harassed to the point where we don't have a day without an threatening phone call, email or letter taped to the door. It's all over money that the landlord doesn't want to spend to maintain his house and he's attempting to bully us into leaving so he doesn't have to make repairs. They know there is nothing they can do to force us out legally as we have done nothing wrong, so they are turning to intimidation and harassment to try and force us out on our own.
We got an email saying the landlord "was tired of dealing with us" and they "we aren't the type of tenants he desires, we need to be more like our neighbors". By our neighbors he means the ones who have no maintenance issues and pay more in rent. Is that considered some form of discrimination? What he's doing seems to fall under landlord retaliation but we don't really know what the terms of anything like that mean or what we can do about it. He wants us out but wont pay us a dime, we cant really afford to pack up and move just because he no longer likes us. Moving is expensive and it takes time to find a new place, we simply didn't plan on moving and don't have the resources to disappear in a few days. We have in writing that he wants us to leave because we aren't the type of tenants he wants. Funny he had no issues until we asked for things to be fixed and stopped doing work ourselves. Our neighbors have lease violations like crazy all over their properties but they get a free pass. We have zero violations and we are getting bullied to the point of mental meltdown.
Anyhow we don't know how to handle it or where to turn. We're not going to leave for free at our expense to please the landlord so he can avoid spending money. Obviously he cant evict us or he would have done so already. He's basically begging us to leave but wont offer any compensation so we can afford to do so. All of this comes on the heels of us just paying rent conveniently, so we have already paid in advance for this month. We don't see any benefit in moving out simply because he changed his mind about liking us and got a little greedy. We'd like to live out the remainder of our lease but the harassment and bullying wont cease, it will likely continue until we throw in the towel and leave. We can not afford to move and we were not planning on moving can we ask for a landlord buyout?
Does anyone have any advice or input on this situation. We'd understand his stance if we had done anything wrong but we haven't, we've been really good to him and have taken very good care of the property.
