Landlord nightmares! — Move in Day

  So after much frustration with a former landlord, a potential landlord, and a new landlord, I’ve FINALLY moved myself into a new place.  Pretty much the story behind this is after a great (and also frustrating) year of living with five house mates, I’ve realized there are so many ups and downs that the pros and cons were pretty equal, however, I wanted to get out of that craphole. 

I was taken into that apartment as a sublet for a living unit, but became a regular housemate after one of the original dropped out (even though he signed the lease).  It was great because I never had to leave the house to find a party on the weekends…the party always came to me…whether I liked it or not.  Some of you may be thinking to yourself how awesome that is, but seriously, its not that great because you want a break after a while!  Buuuut, 3 of my housemates being under 21, naturally, it was their “obligation” to have as many people over as they could and get hammered…every…effing…weekend, which got very repetitive and obnoxious.  Not to mention how irrisponsible they were, resulting in rediculous utility bills, which I paid with much resentment knowing I did not contribute more than 40 or 50 dollars on a 300+ electric bill, so for those of you considering an apartment with 3 or more out-of-control housemates whos only goal is to satisfy their lust for beer and women, you have been fore warned!

Ah, but I digress.  It was indeed a great social atmosphere and despite my description above I really did enjoy most of my time living with them.  But the lease came to an end, and one of my housemates and I decided we “wanted the f*ck outta there” because, simply, we matured.  His girlfriend, Him, and myself decided to get an apartment together, and we ended up finding a place close by.

The place had potential, but was riddled with a rank stench, black trashbags filled with beer cans/bottles piled to the ceiling, behind every doorway, in every room.  The floors/carpets had not been taken care of at all the entire year, and was caked with only god knows what.  The leaky sink filled with dirty dishes, popcorn bags, old peices of chicken, the smell of cat-piss in the rear walkway.  The tenants were the ones showing us this place, and we were asking ourselves how they survived in such horrible conditions, which they obviously made for themselves.  The outside driveway and surrounding property was also riddled with more can/bottle filled trashbags, as well as other freely thrown waste.  None-the-less, we thought it had potential, and to this day I do not know what was in our stupid friggin heads that made us want that place.  The landlord promised the entire place would be gutted and renovated, so we were optimistic.  Four weeks went by and it was almost time to move in, so I went to check the place out expecting to see a squeaky clean apartment that looked relatively new.  To my horror the only things done were trash removal (not even all the trash), a shitty paint job on the walls, and some new doors.  Not to mention the place had been broken into twice in the last 2 months, the first time the theives broke in they beat a tenant, stole his money, and busted his laptop, and the 2nd time all the doorknobs in the house were stolen (yes, doorknobs, and no, I have no idea).

So I called the landlord and said, “Hey, this place isn’t done!”, so he responds with, “What else do you think needs to be done?  Oh yeah I’m also going to be needing this months rent.”  So me and my buddy get a lawyer, because we don’t feel we should pay anything until we can move in, turns out we were right, and the lease was broken by the landlord the day we were supposed to move in, because we couldn’t.  So the lawyer tells us the lease we signed is a joke, writes a nasty letter to the landlord and his “associates”, and gets us off the hook.

Thankfully we found a new apartment close to the gym, and it was a beautiful place, with an awesome landlord.  So we jumped on that and signed the lease, the recent tenants had moved out only 1 week earlier, so the place had just got up on the market.  The landlord is probably one of the greatest landlords anyone could ask for, he is willing to fix or compromise on anything to make his tenants comfortable and safe. 

But here we are shrugging off the stress of the last landlord experience, getting excited about our awesome new apartment, when my former landlord from the last place I lived in comes along telling me everyone that lived in his place last year owes him $1400 for not painting the walls and putting dents in his RUBBER roof!  Not to mention he stole the 60″ HDTV we sold to the new tenants and sold it himself!  I couldn’t believe that sleeze-ball had the gall to make such a statement, especially since we left that apartment in better condition than he gave it to us!  He is a greasy greek bastard who loves money (and his pizza shop) more than his kids, and gives all other greeks a bad name.  I’m currently looking into making a formal request that all his properties be inspected by the department of health for code violations, and I’m sure that would most likely shut him down for at least a year.  But if it doesn’t, regardless, that douche won’t be getting another dime from my pocket.

Wow, and all I wanted to do was update people to the fact that I’ve moved into a great new place.