4 ms·

if your landlord does something illegal an alternative option is to tell him to go fck off rather than to pay or move out. Good luck evicting me if I'm up to da

if your landlord does something illegal an alternative option is to tell him to go fck off rather than to pay or move out. Good luck evicting me if I'm up to date on payments and the contract stipulates terms that I've lived up to.* I have never ever experienced a landlord trying to raise my rent mere days after I moved in, like they seem to do in this game.

_delirium 15y ago
It's not uncommon if it's cheap housing that's only semi-legit to begin with. When I lived in Santa Cruz, I heard all sorts of this kind of shady behavior going on with sublets, which due to housing shortage was the only thing you could really get for <$1000.
- hugh3 15y ago
  But what are they gonna do? They can't legally evict you under those circumstances, so just keep paying the originally-agreed rent.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    You might be able to prevail, yeah, but many people are a bit scared of finding themselves on the street, unable to find another apartment, so aren't willing to play hardball. With an unofficial sublet (no signed lease, etc.), landlords don't necessarily resort to proper court-supervised eviction proceedings; "eviction" can take the form of "change the locks and dump your stuff on the curb, and deny that you ever lived there", which probably rarely happens but seems to be a common worry of people renting irregularly with no paperwork. Then you'd have to find somewhere to live, and undertake the time/expense of suing. The best protection is probably a bit of a mutually assured destruction angle if the landlord is breaking the law through the irregular rental in the first place (in Santa Cruz many of the rentals are off the books because they aren't even legal rental units--DIY converted garages and attics and such). Not sure how big that "informal rental" section of the economy is, though, so maybe this isn't a common situation. I'd guess it's highest in NYC.
shabble 15y ago
The usual money-grabbing scheme I've seen is to require some excessive security deposit, and then contrive ridiculous reasons for keeping large chunks of it. One flat I shared the rental agency tried to withhold £150 for the changing of 1 (entirely ordinary) lightbulb, and cleaning a single drawer of a chest of drawers (a tiny amount of dirt under the drawer lining paper, and not apparent). It's such a persistent theme that I tend to write off the deposit as part of the costs of moving, and consider it a good deal if I see 50% of it again.
- dkersten 15y ago
  This is true. Here, the deposit is usually a months rent. I lived in a house for a while and when we moved out the landlord didn't want to return the deposit (about €1200 I think it was) even though there was no real reason for it. There is some kind of government run agency here to deal with disputes with landlords and they got the deposit back for us, but it took a long time. In the end the landlord had a choice of going to court or paying up and he paid up.

_delirium 15y ago

It's not uncommon if it's cheap housing that's only semi-legit to begin with. When I lived in Santa Cruz, I heard all sorts of this kind of shady behavior going on with sublets, which due to housing shortage was the only thing you could really get for <$1000.

hugh3 15y ago
But what are they gonna do? They can't legally evict you under those circumstances, so just keep paying the originally-agreed rent.
- _delirium 15y ago
  You might be able to prevail, yeah, but many people are a bit scared of finding themselves on the street, unable to find another apartment, so aren't willing to play hardball. With an unofficial sublet (no signed lease, etc.), landlords don't necessarily resort to proper court-supervised eviction proceedings; "eviction" can take the form of "change the locks and dump your stuff on the curb, and deny that you ever lived there", which probably rarely happens but seems to be a common worry of people renting irregularly with no paperwork. Then you'd have to find somewhere to live, and undertake the time/expense of suing. The best protection is probably a bit of a mutually assured destruction angle if the landlord is breaking the law through the irregular rental in the first place (in Santa Cruz many of the rentals are off the books because they aren't even legal rental units--DIY converted garages and attics and such). Not sure how big that "informal rental" section of the economy is, though, so maybe this isn't a common situation. I'd guess it's highest in NYC.

shabble 15y ago

The usual money-grabbing scheme I've seen is to require some excessive security deposit, and then contrive ridiculous reasons for keeping large chunks of it. One flat I shared the rental agency tried to withhold £150 for the changing of 1 (entirely ordinary) lightbulb, and cleaning a single drawer of a chest of drawers (a tiny amount of dirt under the drawer lining paper, and not apparent). It's such a persistent theme that I tend to write off the deposit as part of the costs of moving, and consider it a good deal if I see 50% of it again.

dkersten 15y ago
This is true. Here, the deposit is usually a months rent. I lived in a house for a while and when we moved out the landlord didn't want to return the deposit (about €1200 I think it was) even though there was no real reason for it. There is some kind of government run agency here to deal with disputes with landlords and they got the deposit back for us, but it took a long time. In the end the landlord had a choice of going to court or paying up and he paid up.