Hello! First off, I know this is a massive wall of text. I really appreciate your time. If you feel this would be better answered in a different subreddit, please, let me know where to post it. I'm looking for any information you guys might have regarding my current housing situation. I just moved into a small house at the beginning of February. The rent is $500 a month. When I first checked the place out, it seemed nice enough. It had new carpet, a very nicely redone bathroom tile, and a pretty incredible view. It is located on a magnificent pond right outside of my downtown area. It was obvious that the place was old, but I never imagined some of the problems it had.
The first and most important is the source of heating. It has a single natural gas heater that heats the whole house. When I first moved in, the model that was in the house was very old. I’m not sure of the exact year, but my guess would be it was from at least the 70’s to 80’s. The unit had what appeared to be some kind of heat spreaders inside, only two of them were broken in half and just sitting there on top of each other. Well, one night I heard a loud bump and I ran to investigate and both of them had fallen out of the heater while it was on. They were very hot, too hot to grab, so they sat on the carpet and left burn marks. I told the landlord this and she understood, acknowledged that it was her fault, and that was that. Well, a few nights later, I went to bed as usual, only to be woken up at 11:30 to a screeching carbon monoxide alarm. I called the fire department and they tested and confirmed that the CO levels were way too high for standard use of a gas heater. The next day I told my landlord, and she had the city come check the heater, who also apparently confirmed that the heater was the source of the problem, and recommended replacing it. She replaced it that day, and all seemed well on that front. That was about three weeks ago, my first week in the apartment. Things seemed fine with the new heater aside from one issue. It has a thermostat control with 5 settings. For some reason, on the lowest 2 settings, when the thermostat cuts the heater off, the flame flutters quite audibly for 1-5 minutes. It usually quit on its own, but I noticed that bumping the thermostat up to three made it quit, and it never had that problem on 3. Well, last night, I woke up at 3:30 to the very loud fluttering of the flame. I went to bump up the thermostat and went back to bed. An hour later, I woke up to a screeching CO detector again. It has gotten to the point where I do not feel safe sleeping in that house. This is the main problem I have with the place, but I will go into more detail below.
The second biggest problem I have with the place is the electric system. I don’t think it has been brought up to code since it was built in the 50’s-60’s. Half of the outlets don’t work. The house isn’t grounded, and there are only three 3-prong outlets in the entire house that were shoddily installed somewhat recently. I have had one outlet emit a huge spark when plugging in a light to it. The plugs that weren’t recently added (so roughly 90% of the plugs in the house) have lost all ability to hold a plug in place. Whenever I plug something into every single old outlet in the house, it practically falls out. The slightest wobble will cause it to tumble out. Finally, my dad and I were going to replace a ceiling fan in the bedroom, because two of the four ceiling fans that came with the place, didn’t work. He had a fan laying around from an old job he did, so we were going to put it up. We got the old one down and went to put the new one up only to find out that the old fan was connected to two hot wires as opposed to one hot, one neutral, and one ground. It was connected with two hot wires. The weirdest thing was, the switch only controlled one of the wires. Whenever the switch was in the ON position, one of the wires was hot, and the other was off. When the switch was in the OFF position, both wires were hot. Our guess is this is why two of the ceiling fans do not work. This is my second concern with the place. There are numerous other smaller problems that I will attempt to cover now. The dryer was broken when I moved in. I had my own washer and dryer that I wanted to bring when I moved in but the landlord did not have adequate storage to put hers so I had to sell mine. Upon attempting to dry my first load of clothes, the dryer did dry at all. The oven is also barely operational. One of the eyes doesn’t even work, the drip pans are completely corroded away, and the oven cooks absurdly fast. The house also requires a dehumidifier to be operational pretty much 24/7. I haven’t seen my first electric bill yet, but I am terrified to do so. If the dehumidifier goes off for 30 minutes the humidity jumps up to 80-85%. The refrigerator has a broken shelf inside of it. The back porch steps have one step that has completely rotted away. I have found a multitude of bugs and lizards in my place, so they are getting in somewhere. The windows are old and very poorly sealed. I woke up one morning to find mine bedside window sill covered in water. Every window in the house is constantly covered in moisture.
I could go on probably, but I feel like I have hit all the main concerns. My question is this. Is there anything I can do to get out of this lease if the landlord tries to fight me on it? I have read over the lease and there is nothing written in there about needing to get out of a lease early. It just says that it is a 12 month lease. I have already paid 1500 dollars (first & last month rent, as well as a holding fee to hold the place for one month). It is a tricky situation. My land lord is really a very nice lady. I know she has been having money troubles and her mother literally just died last week, so I hate to spring this on her, but I don’t feel safe living there, and I feel like it isn’t really suitable to be lived in, honestly. If you guys have any advice on how to handle the situation and ways to get out of this lease, I would really appreciate it. Thank you again for your time!
Submitted March 01, 2016 at 01:12AM by hibbert0604 http://ift.tt/1RAWlTp Advice
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