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Okay, so we've been having ongoing issues w/ our current landlord since day one. By this point, he has broken several ordinance rules according to the Chicago Landlord-Tenant Ordinance (RLTO). He's has even gone as far as cutting off our water and threatening to change the locks. He currently is out of state and approached us in January asking us if we could end our lease early (supposed to end in September) so he could move back into our apartment. Yet when we asked him about this in March, he denied this. We got into a spat with him, which is when he started messing with our utilities and appliances. We confronted him a few weeks ago after the water nonsense and told him that we would sue him in court for the violations. He said he wanted to settle with us and would pay us to leave by the end of the month if we dropped any litagation.
We agreed to it, not only b/c we wanted to avoid all the court nonsense but b/c we were partially behind on rent b/c two roommates bailed out w/o paying rent due to the BS. We talked via phone and laid out our terms and he agreed to them.
Now we've come to the issue where the terms are being changed. He told us that he would have his lawyer write up a contract, but that never happened. We offered to have one written up, but that offer was ignored. We sent him an email which he never responded to and the certified letter we sent him was never signed for and came back. However, one check he sent us (the first of a promised 3 since he refused to give us a lump sum) has cleared and we used the money towards a security deposit for a new place. He demanded to see a signed lease before releasing the next check. We obliged and sent it to him. He still refused to send the check and stated that there was damage to the floor that must be fixed. We said that that we could get a professional to check it out and give an estimate and that money could be taken out of the check. He never responded to our idea and provided his own estimate that was 3x more than what our friend, someone who works in construction, guesstimated. He, the LL, has only seen the damage via a emailed photograph the building manager sent him and hasn't provided an explanation as to how he came to that amount
Long story short, he seems adamant to run up bogus charges to take it out of our payments. He's now demanding to hire a cleaning service and pull the costs ($400) out of our check, despite the fact that every quote we've received from legit cleaning companies has been less than $200. He's adding in painting fees, a fee to change the blinds our cats supposedly damaged (they didn't and he's asking $15 for non-fancy blinds) and even saying he needs to replace the microwave b/c of the popcorn smell ($100).
I know we really shot ourselves in the foot by doing all of this verbally and not having a written contract, but he seems adamant to not have one. By this point, while the first check went through, it doesn't look like we'll be getting the agreed upon amount. We're considering pursuing the lawsuit anyways. not sure if we can since we have received money from him. We do plan on checking in w/ a lawyer Monday, but was seeking any advice before hand.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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This sounds like a fool of a landlord. He's trying to set himself up for a court defense by having you agree to move for payment, but then he's not going to pay because of damages, so he renigs on the agreement.
Verbal agreements are worth the paper they aren't written on. I can bring out 50 witnesses who will swear on their mother's grave that you promised to give me a million bucks if I picked my nose in public. Now gimme my money!
Look - life is short, you got your deposit paid, is this worth stressing out over. Why not just move out and get on with something enjoyable and more productive than fighting a loser.
Look - life is short, you got your deposit paid, is this worth stressing out over. Why not just move out and get on with something enjoyable and more productive than fighting a loser.
I agree.
You were going to have to move out in September anyway, so you're only moving out two months early - and you got your deposit on your next place paid for by this guy. Sounds like you got a fairly good deal, considering...
You got enough to pay the deposit on the new place. Now move. Is it really worth your time and effort and aggravation to persue money from a fool? It's like teaching a pig to dance: it aggravates the pig and frustrates you.
Didn't you post that you are behind in the rent? He is probably busy starting eviction proceedings. Yes, he sounds like a jerk Re: shutting off water etc. BUT you already got him to pay a deposit on a new place for you. It's only about 60 days till you would have to move anyway, and since you are behind on rent due to roommates moving out, you should probably just go. If he evicts you, you will have a really hard time renting future places right?
Didn't you post that you are behind in the rent? He is probably busy starting eviction proceedings. Yes, he sounds like a jerk Re: shutting off water etc. BUT you already got him to pay a deposit on a new place for you. It's only about 60 days till you would have to move anyway, and since you are behind on rent due to roommates moving out, you should probably just go. If he evicts you, you will have a really hard time renting future places right?
This is what we're worried about now, him suing us. We're not that worried about him not giving us the rest of the money; we've written that off by now and moved on. sure it would have been nice if he kept to his word, but we realize it's not going to happen, so we're not stressing the money anymore. we've already terminated the lease and moved out anyways (we found a legal way to break the lease due to one of the ordinances he broke, so he can't come after us for rent for the remaining months) so eviction is not a concern at all.
we're far more worried that he'll sue us in court for what he claims we owe him for the "damages", along w/ the back rent. at this point, the amount he claims we owe him for repairs and cleaning surpasses any money we would have given us and that we own him at least an additional $1500, which is ridiculous. He says it'll cost over $1K to fix a half dollar sized, shallow gouge to the hardwood floor (the friend that I mentioned above estimated it at between $250-400). he's already been bugging us to pay for the floors ASAP, again, despite not giving us a legit quote. I know it's a bit early for us to worry about this since nothing has been filed yet, but we're all students and don't want to be surprised by a lawsuit in the fall. Not sure if we should wait for him to make his move (and he will, given the messages he's been leaving. he left a message this morning already threatening to sue) and counter-sue, or if we should strike first in hopes of not having drag through the rest of the year.
we were debating just bringing in our own worker to fix the floor, but don't want to do that since it is his house and don't anyone doing anything to his floor w/o his permission. since we have to turn over the keys on Monday, it doesn't look like we have time to do this anyways. we have the place until the 1st of August and we think we'll just go ahead and hire cleaners, clean the walls (not that dirty, no repainting needed), take highly detail pictures/videos so he can't later say he'll need to hire cleaners or painters and we have to pay for it.
ugh, we were talking and realized that we should have done something more when the first violation happened, or not taken the money at all and sued him regardless. I'm not even sure why we bother to honestly deal w/ a dishonest man. we were trying to keep this out of court, but it looks like it's heading there regardless.
Last edited by eevee; 07-30-2011 at 11:54 AM..
Reason: clarification
I'm not even sure why we bother to honestly deal w/ a dishonest man. we were trying to keep this out of court, but it looks like it's heading there regardless.
Maybe once you're out, and he has the keys, it will end. Sometimes when people are angry they make threats they don't intend to follow through on. If he goes to court, he's taking a risk the judge will side with you - and is it worth the risk to him, once you're officially out of his space?
I do think you're smart to take good photos when you move out, and to move out on time - which really means be out on July 31st, don't wait for August 1st.
well, as of today, at 3:30pm (or maybe it was closer to 4pm?) we were served by a sheriff with a lawsuit. court date is in a couple of weeks. Funny, we were served as we were moving out some items. Even the sheriff who served us thought it was odd that our landlord would serve us as we were moving out and still had the freaking keys!!! Good Lord, if we were vindictive people w/o a case and nothing to lose, we could have TRASHED the place. Of course we never would, just thought that, as a LL, it would have crossed you mind, especially if you're over 1,000 miles away
It's weird, but I'm happy. no more lingering questions about when the gauntlet is going to fall, no more worrying about if we'll breach our verbal contract or not. He's officially breached it. Now we'll just have to see if we need to return the money already paid out (hopefully not, that check has been sent to the new landlord already).
We listed all of the violations he made and, assuming we won damages from all of them, he would owe us nearly $10K, if not more ($5500 just for the security deposit issues). We originally settled for $3K and have received $1K. IDK, I thought we were doing him a favor by not suing him since he would likely owe us more in the end, never mind the hassle of dealing w/ a court case when you don't live in the state (according to the summons, his lawyer is representing him). Now we'll officially have to get a lawyer (first time in a while that I'm glad to be a low income student since we were already offered low cost/free legal aid previously) and I guess counter-sue him for the original ordinances he violated and find all that evidence we've collected
Okay, so this makes ZERO sense! We read the summons. He sent us a summons for eviction. 24 hours after we had already moved out 98% of our stuff. 24 hours after his building manager saw our movers haul out our stuff. 48 hours after we sent him proof that we were moving by giving him a copy of our signed lease for the new place. The only reason we still have the keys is to go through some storm damaged boxes in the basement, clean since we've decided against hiring a service and just doing it ourselves (not sinking any more money into this place), and to retrieve the pets since movers don't move live animals.
We are now being evicted from an apartment we no longer live in by a landlord who knew we were moving out by the 31st, more or less paid for our security deposit in our new location, and who will be getting the keys to his vacant, clean apartment in less than 24 hours.
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