I live in a single-family home that's being illegally rented out to two units. Because of this, everything regarding utilities is in the landlord's name and we've never had to pay for them. At various times throughout the year, she's tried to collect utility money from both apartments by coming up with a number that she thought each apartment should pay.
We've resisted this, and I even had the city of boston come out and do an inspection. What will come of that I'm not sure. That was months ago. Now we're 3 weeks away from moving out.
All along we've felt like she would end up keeping our security deposit as a means to recoup the utilities, so to defend ourselves from this, we sent her a letter on May 1 indicating we would not pay last month's rent and that she should use our security deposit to cover it. She did not put up very much resistance to this.
We feel comfortable in doing this because there is no damage to the apartment. Now she wants to meet with us weeks before we leave in order to do the walkthrough instead of on May 31.
My question is, should we even meet with her? She knows she cannot legally collect the utility money. My feeling is, she's going to come and make false accusations regarding damages (there are none), or find some way to try and talk us into giving money. Either way, I see no benefit to meeting now.
She wants to meet us now because she knows after the 31st she can do nothing. Am I right?
Another gray area is that we never did an initial walkthrough....there is no signed statement of condition detailing the condition of the apartment when we moved in.
Last edited on Mon May 12th, 2008 04:00 pm by lpulverenti
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