Landlords...need your input, what would you do?

[Nicole Pettis]

Landlords I need you input, I am extremely upset and don't know how to handle the situation.

Sorry, I do have to give a little back story, so you understand...

My husband and I are currently renting, however we have bought a house that we will be moving into in November.

The house we are renting now is owned by someone who is an accidental landlord. He bought the house, then about a year later moved in with his fiance in her house & couldn't sell his, so he decided to rent it. We are his second set of tenants.

We do have 2 dogs & a 2.5 year old toddler, one of our dogs is a rottweiler, which as you know it is very difficult to find a place to rent. However, he didn't care about the Rottie, because he is a pit bull owner, so the dog didn't bother him.

When we first moved in, we met with the neighbors on the left side of us(our house is in Milwaukee city where they are very close together) and introduced them to our dogs, so they wouldn't be freaked out about Bear. At the time the yard was fenced on 3 sides, both sides and the back. There was no finished fence on the side part of the yard, towards the front. When we let the dogs out, they stayed in the yard at all times. Again, they are well trained & my husband or I would go out with them.

Anyway, the neighbors to the left of us proved to be a nuisance. They loved to party on their patio till midnight to 1am every night, their patio was right outside our son's & ours bedroom window(and I mean right outside). We could hear everything they said, they would get drunk and fight, yelling profanity at each other(they have a 2 year old themselves) So one night @ midnight we had, had enough. My husband opened the window & asked them to please be quiet, because they were keeping our son up. They apologized, went inside and we thought the problem was over. Little did we know it wasn't.

The next week, she approached my husband and said she was going to turn us into the city because the yard was not fully fenced and we had a rottweiler(Milwaukee has an ordinance against rotties and pits, they must be fenced in) And she did & we were told by the city if we didn't put up a fence we would be fined hundreds of dollars. So we approached our landlord and he said...well you can move if you would like. At the time it wasn't an option, we had just moved in 6 months ago & wasn't about to move again!

So we offered to finish the fence & we did. We bought all the supplies and my husband put in the fence. Never did the landlord offer to help or help purchase the materials. And the neighbor continued to be a nuisance, she would email our landlord telling him we would yell at them & never pick up the dog messes. Which we never have said a word to them since that night. So we decided to it was time to move on, so we bought the house. And he quickly found new renters.

He just emailed me...apparently the new renters want him to replace the kitchen cabinets, which he is going to do. I am FURIOUS, because first of all he hasn't done much to help us with the neighbors and he never offered to help or pay for the fence. He didn't even discount our rent...nada, nothing. However the new tenant wants new cabinets and he has no problem replacing them...which will be a $1500 - $2k job. Also, he is not pro-rating us for the month of November. We will be out by the 3rd week.

I don't know what to do or how to handle this...should I just let it go? Or should I say something?

Thank you for your advice and sorry for the long post.