doowain
Footballguy
OK, so last July we put our house up for sale and started the house search. We didn't find anything that we loved so we decided to build. Unfortunately, our house sold in two weeks, which put us in a 6 month apartment lease (August - Jan). We had stayed in this same apartment community 10 years ago for a year after we were married. We have a son, who was 4 months old at the time, so we were picky with where we moved to. We had zero complaints during our stay before so we felt comfortable with this decision.
Fast forward to September. Weather starts to get colder and all of the sudden we start to smell cigarette smoke in our apartment (neither of us smoke). Mainly the kitchen and laundry room. Not terrible, but definitely noticeable. I had the maintenance guy over for an unrelated issue and mentioned it to him. He said to let him know if it gets worse.
A few weeks later in mid-late October, I walk in to the kitchen and hit a wall of smoke. It centered around the stove area and again in the laundry room. I call the management office. It's after hours, so I put in a Maintenance Request. Guy comes out a couple days later. He says "we get this all the time". That's funny, this never happened in the entire year we were here before. He proceeds to change the air filter and use the "foam in a can" stuff to seal around any spaces in the kitchen and laundry room it could be coming from. OK, cool.
It didn't fix it. Not even a little. So, we call them back out. It takes them until late November to get back out. This guys says the last guy missed a spot with the foam. He fills it in and changes the air filter. AGAIN, it didn't fix the smoke at all.
That day we find out that our closing date on our house is December 31st. We had planned to spend all of January slowly moving stuff in and painting. Now we just want to get the hell out of this place. So, I sent a letter to the management office stating that we were terminating our lease early. It stated that we would turn in the keys on January 8th and I would pay for half of January (1 week longer than we stayed), but would not be paying for the rest of January. I thought that was fair. She calls me the next day with an attitude and said "You owe for the remainder of your lease based on the contract you signed. You can either pay that or the early termination fee of 1 months rent ($1100) plus $350 for every month you have left". Uh what? At that point I decided I wouldn't pay for a single minute past January 8th.
In our letter, we cited our rights covered in the "Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment" as our reason for terminating and for denying our responsibility for paying the remainder of January's rent. They had 2 opportunities to fix this issue and did not. If it would've just been my wife and I in the apartment, I'd have just dealt with it for another month, but considering our infant son, there was no way we could stay any longer once we had a viable alternative.
At the end of the day, we are talking a $700 difference in what they say we owe and what I ended up paying them. Not a huge amount by any means. However, their attitude and unprofessionalism when I've spoken to them has killed any chance of me caving, if only to prove a point.
So, was/am I completely wrong here? What would you have done? Has anyone else experienced anything like this in the past? Do they have legal ground to come after me? And if so, any chance I could win? Everything I've read online says I have a case, but it is the internet afterall.
Fast forward to September. Weather starts to get colder and all of the sudden we start to smell cigarette smoke in our apartment (neither of us smoke). Mainly the kitchen and laundry room. Not terrible, but definitely noticeable. I had the maintenance guy over for an unrelated issue and mentioned it to him. He said to let him know if it gets worse.
A few weeks later in mid-late October, I walk in to the kitchen and hit a wall of smoke. It centered around the stove area and again in the laundry room. I call the management office. It's after hours, so I put in a Maintenance Request. Guy comes out a couple days later. He says "we get this all the time". That's funny, this never happened in the entire year we were here before. He proceeds to change the air filter and use the "foam in a can" stuff to seal around any spaces in the kitchen and laundry room it could be coming from. OK, cool.
It didn't fix it. Not even a little. So, we call them back out. It takes them until late November to get back out. This guys says the last guy missed a spot with the foam. He fills it in and changes the air filter. AGAIN, it didn't fix the smoke at all.
That day we find out that our closing date on our house is December 31st. We had planned to spend all of January slowly moving stuff in and painting. Now we just want to get the hell out of this place. So, I sent a letter to the management office stating that we were terminating our lease early. It stated that we would turn in the keys on January 8th and I would pay for half of January (1 week longer than we stayed), but would not be paying for the rest of January. I thought that was fair. She calls me the next day with an attitude and said "You owe for the remainder of your lease based on the contract you signed. You can either pay that or the early termination fee of 1 months rent ($1100) plus $350 for every month you have left". Uh what? At that point I decided I wouldn't pay for a single minute past January 8th.
In our letter, we cited our rights covered in the "Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment" as our reason for terminating and for denying our responsibility for paying the remainder of January's rent. They had 2 opportunities to fix this issue and did not. If it would've just been my wife and I in the apartment, I'd have just dealt with it for another month, but considering our infant son, there was no way we could stay any longer once we had a viable alternative.
At the end of the day, we are talking a $700 difference in what they say we owe and what I ended up paying them. Not a huge amount by any means. However, their attitude and unprofessionalism when I've spoken to them has killed any chance of me caving, if only to prove a point.
So, was/am I completely wrong here? What would you have done? Has anyone else experienced anything like this in the past? Do they have legal ground to come after me? And if so, any chance I could win? Everything I've read online says I have a case, but it is the internet afterall.
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