My landlord wants to raise my rent and have me start paying for the gas and electric. I haven't decided how much I want to negotiate--any advice from you all would be, by me, appreciated... even if it's just at the level of pro/anti/renter/landlord vitriol. It's a 7% increase, which is double the legal limit for one year, but I've had the same rent for 4 years now so that's legal. But the gas and electric is weird... and there's more than a few repairs that are way overdue. More details in the responses...
jake [email] said at 12:29 AM 09-19-2007: The gas and electric is weird because there's three sub-units in the house and no separate meters. What my land lord wants is to divide the monthly bill by the number of tenants (seven as far as I know), and email us each with our share. Apparently it's only been $40 to $50 since all the units became occupied, but that's summer bills. I've met the people who moved into the other units, but I don't know them at all.
My landlord offered an alternative already: double the rent increase and don't deal with the gas and electric. That's a 14 percent increase and about 30 dollars more than the actual legal limit (3.3 percent compounded over 3 years). To be honest that offer actually pisses me off and makes me more interested in hard bargaining.
Other details: I'm enormously shitty at paying my rent on time, for a lot of reasons which are mostly my fault but not all of them. And I'm always good about paying before the 15th, and I pay the late fee. My landlord is offering a 5 day grace period, which would help me pay on time a lot more. Right now my lease has no grace period. Now, this guy's site has an interesting argument about late fees being completely illegal, but I don't think I have the cojones to go that route. And being shitty about paying rent on time makes me feel less inclined to be a hard-nosed dick.
The proposed rent increase is the same amount as the late-penalty that I pay more often than not, so I can afford it but I will notice it...
There's some work that needs doing in the unit. The back door that the crack head kicked in last spring has an iron gate on it now, but the door is still busted, and the gate isn't quite aligned. The shower head is coming out of the dry wall. The unit is not up to code at all, and has lots of places where spiders and ants and occasionally slugs can get in. The price is pretty cheap for similar square footage and fixtures in this neighborhood, but the condition is comparatively pretty shitty.
My landlord only owns this property, and is a working parent raising a family in Oakland. So I'm a lot more inclined to be understanding than if I were dealing with a faceless rental company.
On the other hand, I'm not eager to pay more money!
jake [email] said at 9:19 PM 09-19-2007: I think that's a non-starter. Legal or not, my track record really doesn't give me much room to argue that one.
kiche [email] said at 10:07 AM 09-20-2007: yeah, but he wants to jack up your rent past the legal limit and make you start paying for utillities (in a really sketchy manner).
it sounds like you have a lot of wiggle room to me. maybe you could just get him to push back the late fee date.
jake [email] said at 2:58 PM 09-20-2007: No, it's legal to raise the rent 3.3% per year, but if you go a few years without an increase, you can make a proportionately bigger jump all at once.
jake [email] said at 3:00 PM 09-20-2007: I never forget, I'm just shitty about getting it done. Mailing things on time is one of my weaknesses.
In my defense, I will say that when I started renting here the landlord lived upstairs, and I still haven't gotten used to not being able to just run up there and slip an envelope under the door.
woody [email] said at 1:52 AM 09-19-2007: You should mention you saw an ad on craigslist where a person was offering sexual favors in exchange for cheap rent, and just see where the conversation goes... gigitty.
john [email] said at 10:44 PM 09-19-2007: In Chicago, city law requires both a 5-day grace period before late fees can legally kick in AND seperate meters for any utilities the tenant is paying for. Boston had similar tenant laws. In both cities, the law sides with the tenant and in Massachusetts at least (I haven't checked Illinois) the landlord is liable for treble damages in disputes, so they are very eager not to go to court.
I suggest you see if these kinds of rules are on Oakland's books, and propose to your landlord something within legal bounds. Also negotiate for specific repairs that you want, at the same time. Oddly enough I've never seen a law that says landlords are required to bring their units up to code. You'd think it'd be on there, but it is most definitely not. I used to say I was gonna run for mayor of Boston on that platform alone.
jake [email] said at 11:13 PM 09-19-2007: I've looked for a separate meters law, and the nearest I can find is California law that says if you don't have separate meters, you have to come to some agreement. The law does talk about what owners and renters can agree to, as opposed to just what owners can charge, but I'm not sure how strong that is.
As far as code goes, that's more of an unspoken threat. When my neighbor moved out of the other unit, she filed a lot of charges and my landlord had to pay a lot to get that unit up to code before putting it back on the market. I'm not going to threaten to do the same thing, though, because I'd never follow through.
josh [email] said at 11:28 AM 09-20-2007: hahaha "you have to come to some agreement". that is an amazing law. "you have to have this, and if not... well, you know, work it out i guess?"
jake [email] said at 9:29 PM 09-20-2007: A lot of contract law is like that, I'd think. There's agreement conditions that are okay to make, and then other ones that are not okay, and that the court will not enforce.
myriam [email] said at 9:46 PM 09-20-2007: "get that unit up to code"
I would be very surprised if this were strictly true. "Up to code" means a lot of things, could even mean as much as installing elevators to make the unit ADA compliant. "up to code" is such a variable term that the law ain't on the books that I've ever found. Also, as code changes every 3-5 years, you'd literally have to inspect and force compliance on landlords ceaselessly.
myriam [email] said at 9:47 PM 09-20-2007: Wow, that is utter bullshit. How on earth can you force someone to pay for unmetered electricity use? Fuck that shit. I would never do it, in a million years.
jake [email] said at 11:14 PM 09-19-2007: Thanks for the advice, all.
Here's what I'm planning on sending right now.
Hi Ammee,
Thanks for emailing me. I had been expecting to see the new agreement before talking about it and it had slipped my mind.
I don't think you mentioned a rent increase in your previous emails, but I do think that $750 is reasonable and appropriate since my rent hasn't gone up in 3 years.
I do have concerns about the splitting of the pg&e, though. I've met everybody, but I really don't know them or anything about their heat and electricity use. There are some things that immediately come to mind that would be problems--I think the upstairs unit has a thermostat/air conditioning control. I know mine doesn't, and though I have a space heater I didn't use it once last year. The washer/dryer upstairs runs off the shared electric line. What happens if the bill is extremely high in January, when I will be gone for three weeks out of the month? For that matter, I was gone for most of July and August; I think I spent 10 nights in the apartment total for that whole time.
I can understand you wanting to shift the responsibility for the utility bill onto us, since we're the one's using the gas and electricity. I know pg&e can go way up sometimes and that's not something you should be stuck with. Until your last email, I was assuming that we'd eventually be getting separate meters, but I guess that's not possible. I'm also uncomfortable taking responsibility for an even share of a bill that I don't have even control over. Do you think the $50 dollar increase in the basic rent is enough to cover my share?
jake [email] said at 3:06 PM 09-20-2007: I agree about the meters though I'm pretty sure it ain't gonna happen. I don't think the code could be fixed without me moving out, and the unit is at least $100 below market even with the increase, so I'm okay with that.
I agree I need to stop paying late. It's something I consistently feel shitty about for the exact reason you say. For what it's worth, I'm usually 5-7 days late, and I think the latest I ever was, was 12 days. On the other hand, when I have paid on time, my landlord has sometimes not deposited the check for two weeks. But that's not an excuse for paying late.
Also, for what it's worth, my landlord is not a man. I wondered if anyone would notice the gender neutrality.
