Question to CA landlords from a renter aspiring to be a landlord

Question to CA landlords from a renter aspiring to be a landlord

Les GoodmanPro Member
Member since 2020 · 7 posts · 2 votes

Hi landlords,

So I e-mailed my landlord about a few things happening with the property, see below along with his response. 

  1. I hope the Holidays have been treating you well. There are a few things with the property I wanted to bring to your attention.
    1. Front Gate, see photo attached. The spring "hinge" keeps coming loose. It was secured with nails originally and I have made multiple attempts to replace those nails, which I now cannot find. Also the gate is becoming increasingly difficult to open, close, and even lock. The upper portion is significantly rubbing against the frame and removing paint/wood.
    2. Breaker/electrical issue. It seems the lights for the carport, all exterior outlets, and both bathroom outlets are on the same breaker. I'm not sure if there are any other outlets or not. The breaker likes to randomly get tripped. There are times over the years that I wouldn't notice this for days and would end up losing hundreds of dollars in food over the years from my freezers outside being shut off. I'm down to one freezer and this is still a continued problem and have no idea what trips it as there isn't much of a power change happening. I'm able to notice this more frequently because of being home more often these days.
    3. Gardner - I'm not sure if you have changed gardeners or changed what they should be doing on my side of the property, but they have not come inside the gate in ages. I was here one day recently and did notice they went into Michelle's backyard, but then never come into mine.
    4. I'll work on getting you those photos/videos of the wall/framing damaging from when the windows/siding was being replaced

Here was his response:

We should meet and I will bring our contact over so we can both review it. After that I will have our repair person to set up a time with you to make the necessary repairs. I want to review our contact that pertains to the yard and debris.

I live in a duplex and have been here for over 4 years. When moving in my landlord told me that there would be a gardener to clean up the fallen debris from 2 giant redwoods in the driveway and during this whole time they were also coming into my front and back yard with a blower to get debris. There is a huge tree in a neighbors yard that drops tons of leaves in the back.  

I want to response kindly asking to keep to e-mail communication as it is apparent a verbal statement or agreement will hold no validity in his mind. I know what my lease/contract says, it's a pretty standard one from ProPubForms.com. However as a business owner if I was paying for a service (i.e. gardener) and that service was not being done to it's full capacity I would want to know about it so it could be addressed with that contractor and not lay fault and blame to someone else. FYI Michelle is the tenant in the other unit to the duplex.


I know if I was the landlord I would be thanking my tenant for bringing it to my attention. On the flip side, if they are trying to reduce cost now I feel all they have to do is just tell me that, not take up anyone's time by going over the lease, but then why is the gardener still going onto the other unit's side?

Am I in the wrong for feeling this way? 

Thank you

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  • Rental Property Investor · Laguna Niguel, CA · Member since 2019 · 175 posts · 116 votes
    5y

    Also an aspiring landlord - The issues you bring up sound simple but also sound like they could be expensive to the landlord. There is nothing wrong with hearing the landlord out and going over the contract. If the contract explicitly says no cleaning then you are kinda screwed and probably want to talk to an attorney. Also, when you meet, if you want stuff documented you can send a follow up email saying "thanks for meeting, per our discussion, we agreed to x and x and x by y date"

    Tell your landlord you have a lot going on as you are sure they do as well so having emails is for your sanity (even if it so you can track what he is doing and not doing) and peace of mind.

    I think worse case scenario if you have a strong case you should be able to break the lease contract and move out. It really boils down to what the contract says tho.

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