Landlord Gets All His Mail sent to Rental Property (sale, subletting)

[kozmikowboy]

I have rented a house for 11 years and for this entire time period the owner/landlord of the house has gotten his and his ex wifes mail sent here....they both live in the city i do...and this includes their bank statements; tax returns; tickets from police; correspondence about their kids' education from city and provincial education departments; drivers license renewals from the government; credit card statements....also the owner/landlord only accepts cash deposits for rent and will not accept cheques...& i have given up asking for receipts since he always says he will drop them off but none ever appear,,,i think one or 2 receipts in 11 yrs renting from him..would I be correct in thinking that for this entire time he has not declared any rental income for the house? What other reasons could he have in having his and his ex wife's important correspondence continually be sent to my address?? Surely he knows how to do a change of address? If not for income taxes what other dodgy reasons would he be doing this?

[Zoisite]

Originally Posted by kozmikowboy

I have rented a house for 11 years and for this entire time period the owner/landlord of the house has gotten his and his ex wifes mail sent here....they both live in the city i do...and this includes their bank statements; tax returns; tickets from police; correspondence about their kids' education from city and provincial education departments; drivers license renewals from the government; credit card statements....also the owner/landlord only accepts cash deposits for rent and will not accept cheques...& i have given up asking for receipts since he always says he will drop them off but none ever appear,,,i think one or 2 receipts in 11 yrs renting from him..would I be correct in thinking that for this entire time he has not declared any rental income for the house? What other reasons could he have in having his and his ex wife's important correspondence continually be sent to my address?? Surely he knows how to do a change of address? If not for income taxes what other dodgy reasons would he be doing this?

He likely isn't declaring rental income. There could be numerous other reasons for him doing this, but one example is he might be renting it from somebody else who is the real owner and is subletting the property to you at a high profit and not declaring income. Another example is your landlord himself might be a front for criminal activity being conducted overseas by other criminal people who actually own the house illegally.

I would never rent a place from any so-called landlord who does what your landlord is doing with his mail. I wouldn't want to take a chance on being accused and charged as a knowing accessory to fraud or as a willing front for other more serious criminal activities that that address is being used for.

I also wouldn't want to be living anywhere that the landlord makes frequent visits to pick up mail and disrupts my privacy, nor to not have receipts and rental agreement with his name on it that proves that I'm paying rent and am not squatting illegally.

Are all your utilities and other services in your name at that address? Do you know what his real residential address is? What kind of arrangement do you have with your landlord for any kind of repair and maintenance work that needs to be done there?

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[kozmikowboy]

(1) Yes all utilities are in my name and have been since day one.....he has never lived in the house and never had utilities in his name either before i came to rent the house or since.
(2) I cannot find a real residential address for him....he lives in same city as me....he has a professional business office address though that if i had to guess is also where he lives...which is the same address in turn where his parents live and operate a daycare.
(3) I found out via Land Titles Office he was the owner of the rental property until 17 months ago when he sold property to his parents,,,and the parents issued a Caveat Forbidding Registrations right after the sale,,,,such caveats commonly used to be able to sell house without liens or debts (of their sons for instance) affecting or blocking the sale of house,
(4) because of (3) i realized i have been depositing rent for 17 months into the personal account of someone who is not even the owner of the property...who continues to claim hes the owner and act and sign legal documents as the owner,,,,I was never informed of this sale to his parents....from him or parents....and nor have i been told that he the son is their agent either.
(5)"arrangement for repair and maintenance work".......Now this is the issue that dominates all the other issues here....when i came here this giant old house was in a state of terrible disrepair.....owner said he wanted a self starter who wouldnt hesitate to fix things and whose tool wasnt just calling him....he made it clear that if too many calls to him were made he would just "kick everyone out and board up the house" and that he did not want to field calls from tenants and had better things to do that "repairing toliets and sinks"... so that was his wish.. i took on that role (nothing written) because i liked the potential of the house for what I do (i am an artist) and made this mistake of giving him the benefit of the doubt or trusting him that once I improved things so that better tenants could be attracted (i became in effect the immediate landlord /property manager who did everything that involves tenants moving in , staying, and moving out...I also live in the house) that my hard work would be recognized and compensated...in some way...but after 2 or 3 yrs of spending $$ on materials and lots of time making the place better working and attractive...and him not even replying to my messages regarding some sort of compensation , at the very least for the materials, I was after spending an entire month on the house due to breakdowns of things that needed immediate replacing and or fixing, this being an entire month away from the things i do that generate me an income...forced to withhold some rent collected to give me some $$ to live on...and this basically became the "process" btween us....and a "process" as unorthodox and unwanted (at least by me) as it is that certainly far benefitted him than me....if u take the rent withheld for work and expenses over 10 years it amounts to a whooping 114$/month for him to have a full time live in property manager who has made it that he hasnt had to spend one minute of his time or one dollar of his own money on this house in 11 years...Now one would think that a rental property owner would be thrilled to have a tenant who did that for him...right? Wrong....last month when a hole developed in the roof of the house that let in so much water it collapsed the ceiling of a tenants bedroom down onto her bed...making the room un liveable during the 3 weeks i had to stop everything else in my life and repair that roof and the wall and ceiling that the water had ruined...and told him so...i was hit with an eviction notice for "authorized work"!!...Now i should add that during these 11 years he was fully informed of me working on this house ....what i did ...and what i did was nothing less than replace everything in the house from furnaces to water heaters to toliets to ovens stoves laundry machines and on and on...at my time and $$...at no time did he ever say once " hey you have to get my permission first".....not to mention ever once offer to give me compensation for my time and work ....there would be no rent to collect if it wasnt for my infinite hours of time working and replacing infrastructure in the place...a fact that he deems irrelevent ....

[Zoisite]

I think you should just find a legitimate place to live.
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