Single family home or...?

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lostinmn

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I am looking for some help defining a couple of things.

If a person (landlord) owns a house, that is considered a single family house - your regular two-story building, with garage, 1 kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and 4 bedrooms, rents out 1 or more of those bedrooms to tenants, is (or can) that building considered a multi-unit residential building? A tenant has his/her private room, and shared access to everything else. If any of you have any cases I can look at, that would help a lot too.
 
It can be considered an improperly zoned boarding house but not a multifamily dwelling.
 
I don't think I explained this correctly. This is a person owning a normal single family house and wants to make easy bucks renting out rooms. Tenants are by no means his family and have a signed lease.

There are certain laws regarding utility billing that apply to multi-unit residential buildings that have a shared (single) meter. But, if landlord says this is just a single family home, then he has an absolute zero rules to follow as far utility billing. This is a tricky question that I want an answer to. Technically, the house was built as single family, but now there are multiple not related people living in that house under leasing contracts. Wouldn't the fact that those people live there, rent there, not related to owner, make the building multi-unit?
 
No, it would make the house a boarding house. A multi-unit house is one that has separate self-contained complete units. When someone rents our rooms in a single family home they have created a boarding house which is usually against the zoning and home owner's association rules. You can get away with it if you have "a roommate" but not if you have a HOTEL. I'm not sure what you are after here. If you are one of those tenants trying to make the landlord abide by multi-unit rules you are out of luck.
 
Which brings me to the question - exactly what laws do such landlords abide?
 
If it is a single family dwelling then the whole thing is illegal. What rules are you looking for? Unless someone challenges the fact that he can not have a rooming house that is zoned single family, your contract with him rules.
 
The laws I was looking for concern primarily utility billing. MN laws refer to either separate billing -renter is the account owner and sole user of utilities (this wasn't and couldn't be the case), or billing in multi-unit residential buildings on shared meter (also not a case because it's a single family home). So it seems like landlords situation doesn't fall under any laws and he doesn't have to abide anything.
 
You are correct. He doesn't fall under any of the laws because this isn't a multi-unit property. So he can charge you whatever the two of you agree upon.
 
So if the landlord overcharges there are no laws to fix that, correct?
The landlord didn't break anything on the lease, which said we split it evenly 50/50, he just lied about how much utilities are during some months. While I agreed to pay half, I did not agree to pay double of what he said.

P.S. As far as boarding house, there have to be 5 or more unrelated adults living in the house to qualify for one, according MN definition.
 
For there to be multi-units there has to be MULTI-UNITS. I'm saying that renting out rooms does not make it a multi-unit, it makes it more of a boarding house. Gail is right, make them show you the bill.
 
I saw the bill every month while I was living there and paid half every time. However, before I moved in I asked landlord how much those bills come to and believed his answers without seeing the bills for previous year. For multi-unit laws the landlord is required to show bills to prospective tenants, but those renting out from their own houses aren't required to do that and can easily lie and get away with it.
I realize utility bills are high but if landlord has old equipment that uses more gas/electricity then I don't have to rent his place if I find the price being too high. But if landlord makes it sound like his bills never (as in not even once, not even during winter) exceed amount X but actually it was 2X, gets people as tenants by matters of lies then it's not right. I could have found a place where landlords either didn't charge for utilities or only had a reasonable set amount every month.
 
My utilities (gas, water, electricity) have increased from last year to this year, although the number of folks living here hasn't changed.

Utility companies periodically increase their rates; thus, what I paid last year is going to be less than what it costs me this year. I have no control over this and neither would your landlord.

In addition, if last years bills reflected just the landlord living there, it would make sense that the utility bills would increase once another person (you) moved in.

Gail
 
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Gail in Georgia said:
My utilities (gas, water, electricity) have increased from last year to this year, although the number of folks living here hasn't changed.

Utility companies periodically increase their rates; thus, what I paid last year is going to be less than what it costs me this year. I have no control over this and neither would your landlord.

In addition, if last years bills reflected just the landlord living there, it would make sense that the utility bills would increase once another person (you) moved in.

Gail
Click to expand...

You are right but partially. Yes, bills increase but do not double in the amount over 1 year. I specifically asked landlord about winter months, and what he told me was nowhere near what I saw happen. He told me the costs based on two people, himself and previous tenant. I am very conservative with energy and I paid bills before and am paying now so I know I don't waste and didn't rack up the bill. I let the higher charges go for a while thinking it's due to increasing costs. Untill I saw the last bill that almost made me choke. At that point I was moving out and it was my last day, landlord was extremely rude and it didn't even occur to me to ask for last year's bill for that month (my mistake).
 
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