A rant (I promise not to swear in this one)

seun

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As you know, my girlfriend and I moved house a couple of months ago. The plan was to share a house with my eldest brother for 18 months and save some cash possibly as a deposit on our own place. My sister and her family had a 5 bed house they were renting so we moved in. All cool so far.

Cut to a few weeks later: the downstairs toilet/bathroom hadn't been finished, the oven didn't work properly and the hot water was very temperamental. All these were jobs my brother in law said would be fixed within a week of us moving in. He came round last week with an enginneer to look at the boiler and find out what was up with the hot water. (It would run lukewarm, cold and maybe hot if we were lucky). He couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Cut to Christmas Eve: boiler dies completely. We had NO heat and NO hot water. I phoned my sister to tell her. My brother in law couldn't drive to the house as he had been drinking. Christmas Day comes and goes, nothing happens. By Boxing Day evening, the house was down to 9 degrees and the cats didn't want to eat in the kitchen as the floor was too cold to walk on. I spoke to my sister again and she told me the boiler was our responsibility as we apparently broke it. Nevermind that they are the owners and as such have to pay for repairs such as a broken boiler.

End result is I got a guy out yesterday who found three problems the first guy missed. The boiler works, I'm £100 worse off and we're now so fucked* off with the whole thing, we're looking at moving house...2 months after moving in.


*OK. I lied.
 

III

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Renting a house from family or friends is one of the quickest ways to destroy the relationship (aside from just loaning money). Move as asap, my friend. I hope things work out for you.
 

seun

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Renting a house from family or friends is one of the quickest ways to destroy the relationship (aside from just loaning money). Move as asap, my friend. I hope things work out for you.

Thanks. We're looking at buying. Having our own place would be sweet. :)
 

jst5150

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Take the boiler with you...
Word.

If you HAVE to stay, get something in writing (though I'm not sure how solid it would be vs. in the USA). Something binding. After all, this is a business relationship you've entered. There are certain tenets that should be met along the way (one of those should have been "brother cannot be too pissed to come over and fix the boiler.") Again, someone's the landlord and someone's the tenant.

In any case, having something in writing means you probably get your $210 back for the boiler (yes, I did the saddening American Exchange rate there ...)
 
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dpaterso

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Just asking, are you paying them rent?

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Ol' Fashioned Girl

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Are there no landlord/tenant laws where you are? Check 'em out and act accordingly... depending, of course, on whether or not you want to continue to have ANY kind of cordial contact with your sister and her husband.

If you're paying rent, deduct the money from your next month's payment. And if you're not paying rent... um... hush. ;)
 

seun

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I just did a quick search on Google for Landlord/Tenant law in England - and it's opposite what it is here in the colonies. Apparently the tenant is responsible for keeping the property and garden in good repair! Bummer.

True, but landlords pay for stuff like boilers. At least they have in every property I've rented for the last 10 years.
 

clockwork

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This won't help you very much but it's a demonstration of landlord/tenant madness from another POV.

I bought a flat a couple of years ago and to help pay the mortgage, I took on a tenant to live with me. Over three years I had three tenants. The first two were fine and moved on after their contracts expired and after they'd graduated university. The third tenant was a nightmare.

The guy had been diagnosed for all sorts of good stuff like depression and was taking an awful lot of pills. He was antisocial, paranoid and had the most disgusting cooking and personal hygiene standards. I tolerated this for about three months and when next month's rent was due, he told me he'd left it for me in the living room and hadn't I seen it yet? I checked. There was nothing (duh) and from there it went downhill.

He refused to pay and the nastier side of his personality emerged. I had decided to sell the flat by this point (about four months in) which he knew was going to happen when he moved in, but still, he said he wasn't going anywhere. I cleaned the rest of the flat for buyer viewings but he refused to clean his room which was an absolute rat's nest of junk and stink. I had to apologise whenever someone came round to view the place - how it sold is a friggin' miracle.

It was during one of these viewings that I discovered a missing birthday card from my brother along with a pile of other missing letters. Yes, the prick had been stealing my mail. Including a birthday card from my brother. I'm not a confrontational or violent person by any stretch but that's about the closest I came to wanting to remove someone from the earth. I confronted him and he deflected with the old, "That's my room which you have no right to be in," routine.

So by this time, we were well into kicking him out through legal channels. I did my research and talked to two lawyers and the deputy chief super-indendent of Tayside police (dad of a friend of mine.) All who told me not to even think about throwing him out myself because he could come back and sue. The law, it seemed, was firmly on his side.

Another six weeks of hell go by before he finally moves out. By then it was summer and he'd graduated anyway so he had places to go. In all, it was just about eight months of one of the worst experiences of my life.

So. I clean his room, air out the stench and get the place ready for viewing. It's as I'm doing this that I get a phone call from the dad of another friend of mine who'd only just heard what was going on and wanted to see how I was doing. Now this guy was an enforcement officer for the sherrif's department. He's the guy who handles evictions, enforces eviction notices and the rest. I tell him the whole story and he goes, "I wish I'd known about this sooner. If you'd come to me at the start and told me what was going on, I wouldn't have hesitated to tell you to physically throw him on the street."

I gasped and told him that I'd received the exact opposite advice from everybody else. "Trust me. I'd never officially advise someone to do that but if it were my house or my kids, I wouldn't hesitate. There's no way a graduate student is going to sue you."

A kick to the stomach. I'd lived with an utter monster for four months because I was afraid of what he'd do if I stuck up for myself. It took me a long time but I came to realise I was a little stronger for the experience and a little less naive about these things. At the very least, it made me realise I would do my best to never house/flat share again and, if I did and found myself in that situation again, the guy would be on the street as soon as he left the place.

My long, drawn-out point? The law is an utter ass and these kind of situations are just going to go on and on. I would do your very best to remedy it as painlessly as possible, setting all matters of pride or 'doing the right thing' aside. The damage this sort of thing can do to you both physically and emotionally (and potentially to your family,) really isn't worth it.
 

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MURDER THEM DESCREETLY-THEN YOU CAN REALLY TAKE THINGS OVER-PERHAPS EVEN START A SILLY GANG WHILE SITTING IN THE SCRUBS-WELL IT WAS JUST A SUGGESTION-JUST TRYING TO HELP-ME? I'D KILL THE BUGGERS. IF A RANT DOES NOT HAVE SWEAR WORD FOR CHRIST SAKE WHAT THE HELL USE IS IT!!! OH I AM FULL OF WHIMSY TODAY!!!!
 

Sophia

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Your house-related posts have been interesting for me, as they've somewhat mirrored our experiences recently - moving house in September, sorting out BT telephone lines and Sky, and a new but bizarrely dodgy boiler that required a couple of call-outs, before finally packing up during the night, so no hot water or heating these past two days. All fixed now, and the relatively mild weather meant it wasn't any hardship, but the point is, I sympathise quite strongly with your woes!

I hope that your house-hunting is quickly successful. For us, we worked out what we could afford and kept a look out for properties within our budget, ready to jump as soon as we found something that felt right. There have been several advantages to having our own house: for one, it is a new build, which means it conforms with current 'green' guidelines, making it very efficient at retaining heat, among other things. The bills are already less than they were in our flat, and the knowledge that we aren't dependent on anybody else's good behaviour (a landlord) for total peace of mind is a huge bonus. I've had no regrets - it's wonderful being in our own place!
 
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This thread exactly illustrates why I never want to house share with anyone. Even if I ever get married, it'll be a case of separate houses, the speakeasy phone rings, I pick it up, and a man's voice saying, "I thought I might visit you tonight, my dear. I'm wearing a new smoking jacket."

:D

Romantic, huh?
 

seun

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This thread exactly illustrates why I never want to house share with anyone. Even if I ever get married, it'll be a case of separate houses, the speakeasy phone rings, I pick it up, and a man's voice saying, "I thought I might visit you tonight, my dear. I'm wearing a new smoking jacket."

:D

Romantic, huh?

I own a smoking jacket...:e2brows: