I just acquired a 4 unit property that came with a coin laundry setup and a 5 year contract that started in 2016. We're taking the property off rental market, renovating and plan to use it as short term vacation rental. Since we'll be doing all the cleaning / maintenance we'll be using the laundry 95% of the time, with guests having occasional access to laundry. I'd want to get the coin machines out of there and install our own since there will be plenty of laundry done on a daily basis.

I'm looking for a way out of the contract. One option is to buy them out but that doesn't fit my definition of "getting out". :-)

The situation is a bit unusual, perhaps the devil is in the details : The original owners who signed the contract owned 2 buildings on 2 adjacent lots. The contract is for both buildings. I bought one and my friend and real estate agent bought the other. The laundry room is in my building, his doesn't have any laundry facilities.

He contacted the coin laundry company asking to break the contract due to property sale and taking off rental market, they didn't cooperate. The two of us on the other hand fully cooperate with each other and are willing to do whatever makes sense to get out of this contract.

I've had a few ideas about how to go about this:

- I can say I don't want him or his tenants / guests to have access to my property, so they don't have laundry facilities. He can then turn around and build it in his building, for his own use. Would the current coin laundry have a case to prevent this? If they do, then they would have to install another set of machines in his building and at best have the same total income as before, I'm not sure if that would make sense for them economically. If they can't prevent that or don't want to install coin machines there, then I use his free laundry machines, coin income goes down to zero and they can break contract and take their machines out of my laundry room anytime they feel like it.

- The contract states "... use and occupancy of all common laundry facilities now existing and hereafter created...". We can add our own machines but say that they are for exclusive use of one unit in the building. We can't stop others from using our machines because they are not locked, and no one in their right mind would pay if there are free machines right next to coin ones. Zero coin income > done.

- Worst case scenario - we'll ask our cleaning crew to take laundry offsite and keep doing this for 2-3 months until coin company realizes they are getting no income and hopefully decide to break contract and pull their machines > done.

- I also thought of catching them stealing income from us - we could use their machines but our cleaners would be able to account for all laundry activities (or very close to) and count what goes in there. Then after they send us our cut, if it doesn't match, they are in breach of contract and we break it and they can take us to court over that. I'm sure with proper documentation we'd have a field day.

Any other creative ideas?

I've uploaded the contract here, if anyone wants to take a closer look:

https://ufile.io/ev7jg

Thanks!

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Getting out of a coin laundry contract

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