All Forum Posts by: Wes Brand

You may be in some luck depending on the lease, and you'll have to talk to an attorney, but contracts need consideration from both sides to be valid...her paying $0 may give you a way to invalidate it immediately. Or it may not. 

I'm not sure what the last picture is. If that's a shower rod...try to hit a stud next time. If it's a door handle, you'll want to add a wall protector where the handle hits the wall.

The spindle is most likely your responsibility to fix, probably shouldn't be, but unless your tenants admit to causing the damage you're in for a bit of a fight if you want them to pay while they're living there and didn't ask for any repairs. (it's a safety issue -- a broken railing can cause a major injury which could get you sued and, even if it broke because of the tenant, you'll have to prove that they did it. 

@Thomas S.

Why would you even consider renewing their lease if they'd treat the property in such a manner and are "animals"? Personally at this point if I wanted to renew their lease I'd do it and ignore the damage, if I didn't like the damage I'd not renew their lease and take the repairs out of their security deposit and find someone else. 

We're talking about some minor damage to the drywall, not property destruction. 

As a renter I'd be pretty pissed if a landlord inspected a unit I was in and said 'oh, there's some damage to the drywall I'm going to fix it and charge you'. I'd definitely be looking at my legal options at that point to see if I could get out of paying it or sue the landlord. Now, if the landlord fixed it and didn't charge me it wouldn't be a big deal, or if they did it at move out time and did charge.

Don't worry about fixing it if they're not complaining. You still have their security deposit, so you'll just take it out of the deposit when they finally move out. If your deposit doesn't cover the damage, you may need to do something else.

If I understand your question properly you're wondering if you should lock people into a year long lease and then raise their rent after a month, or if you should just raise the rent up front on the lease renewal? 

You can't raise the rent on a year long lease unless you write it into the lease. That's what the tenant gets for agreeing to stay in your property for a year - stable terms and conditions that they know up front.

@Tim Swierczek I believe you are incorrect. 

I am unable to find *any* citations that a landlord must maintain a specific interior temperature in MN at large. Certain cities have more stringent requirements of a specific interior temperature, but nothing for the state. Additionally, in many places space heaters are deemed insufficient via building codes or tenants rights, but I was unable to find anything in MN that said "you must have a furnace".

@Tim Swierczek Mind citing something? 

I couldn't find anything that said there was a requirement for a landlord to provide heat for a tenant, unless it's specified in the lease that the landlord pays for heat. I found several sources that said a tenant could repair and deduct, I found several sources that said a utility company can't cut off heat in the winter without first giving 7 days notice, and I found several sources that said there is no minimum interior temperature law/code/guideline in MN at large, but some cities may be more specific. 

I'm not familiar with MN but generally cities give you a reasonable amount of time to cure defects before penalizing you, where reasonable is left up to the courts and depends on specifics. A week to fix the problem is probably fine but your laws may vary in your local area.

I did find the following which seems to say you're completely fine to say "nope, not going to give you a discount", since the rules are only when the LL provides/pays for the heat.

https://homelinemn.org/2642/when-is-my-landlord-re...

That said, if you want to keep them around, why not pro-rate the week of rent and charge them for 3 weeks for the month instead of 4?

Personally I would not fill out anything sent to me by a local government unless I was legally required to. 

It's sent by the assessor's office, most likely they plan to use the results to adjust your taxes, so I'd consult with someone familiar with assessments in that area.

@Mark Gee You may want to see if your tenants want to do rent-to-own and you can carry the note for a bit.