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Need advice on dealing with difficult landlord

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LandlordLaura
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Joined:	Mon Aug 21st, 2006
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Posted: Sun Jul 6th, 2008 02:30 am

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It would be best if you consult with an EXPERIENCED Real Estate Attorney and/or Landlord Tenant Attorney who practices law in the same area where the rental property is located for direct advice. Many State Landlord Tenant Laws exclude lease-to-own contracts and you need to find out whether the Colorado Landlord Tenant Laws even apply to your situation. Additionally, because you have a situation where the Landlord/Seller is "crediting" you with a portion of the rent, you should be very careful to follow the appropriate laws to avoid losing your "credit". Be careful.

Good luck with your investigation. Please let us know what you find out...

anna6890
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Joined:	Fri Jul 4th, 2008
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Posted: Fri Jul 4th, 2008 03:55 pm

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My husband and I recently moved into a house in Colorado that we are currently renting. We do have a rent to own agreement in our lease that stipulates part of our rent goes towards a downpayment when we purchase the house. We have the option to buy at any point during the lease or at the end.

This isn't the issue though, the issue is that our landlord has one of her friends managing the property. We are constantly unable to get ahold of this guy, he's given us numbers that only sometimes works and when we leave messages he seldom returns our calls. After we moved in it took almost a month for us to finally get our lease signed and for him to finally pick up our first months rent and security deposit because he "was too busy" to come by and take care of it and also because he "couldn't find a lease he liked". Now he's telling us he wants us to go deposit the rent into the owners account ourselves because he doesn't want to have to come by to pick it up.

All the windows in the house need to be replaced because their wood framed windows that have been here for over 20 years and are dry rotted and have no seal. Our master bedroom window had been painted shut and finally my husband had to climb onto the roof to pry it open. The landlord agreed to pay for replacement of all these windows, but now the property manager is telling us that we have to cover the cost and he'll just reimburse us forit even though that was not the agreement. In our lease we have a stipulation that we will cover minor repairs and maintenace that the landlord approves and they'll reimburse us for those, but the landlord is supposed to cover any major repairs. This manager though is claiming that window replacement is minor repairs even though the quote we got after they asked us to was for over $4000 for 2 of the 9 windows that need replacement.

We finally called the landlord after we couldn't get a hold of the manager and told her about the issues we were having with him, since then he's developed a major attitude with us about any issues and basically told us he's looking for any excuse to force us out of the house. Our goal is to purchase the house hopefully by the end of the year so we want to maintain a good relationship wth the owner of the house, but it's kinda hard to do so when she doesn't want to get involved and the guy she has managing the place is uber lazy and has the personality of Sybil. What rights do we have in getting the repairs done that need to be done? Also do we have any recourse? We have concerns also about a bunch of cracks in the walls so we're wanting to request an inspection of the property to find out what's causing the cracks and also there's some nails in the roof that are protruding and one is even missing. We think most of this is due to settlement but we'd like to have it inspected to ensure the homes integrity esspecially since we do want to buy it. Basicaly part of our agreement is that all major repairs will be taken care of before we purchase the house so that way it's not an issue for us when we become the owners.

We also are dealing witht he fact that the owner of the house has 3/4 of the basement (the unfinished part) full of boxes of her property, so we have no access to this area of the house. She also has property in 1/2 of the garage and her car in the driveway. She agreed to rent us the car for $50.00 a month and we cover gas and oil changes for it, but we still have yet to have access to the car because the manager has yet to get the registration done, and until then there's no point in us having the key since we can't drive it but it's kind of in the way where it's at for now. The car also apparently needs a spare tire and a jack because the originals were stolen from the vehicle.

Basically we're just wondering what we should do to help cover ourselves in this situation. I beleive our next step is to right a letter and send it out certified to either the owner or the manager informing them of the major repairs that should be done, as well as asking the owner to remove her property from the storage area so we have access to it and the rest of the garage. Any advice would be most welcome.

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