apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My landlord just tells us to fix it and deducts it from the payment.

I fix my own little things - but when it comes to big things like plumbing woes or a dying refrigerator, my landlord has been really good about getting the job done and items fixed/replaced in a reasonable amount of time.

My current landlord is great. A previous landlord was really slow to even return our phone calls. It took over a month to get a sufficient front door put in (my housemate forgot her keys one time and got into the house via her credit card). We eventually replaced it ourselves. With him, we created an addenda to our rental agreement allowing us to do the repairs automatically on things under $25. Anything major with the bathroom, electrical, kitchen, et al he had 24 hours to make contact and get it fixed or else we took care of it on our own and deducted it from the next month rent.

"You'll get a new kitchen faucet before thanksgiving" (a week ago, and still nothing)
"I'll replace the soapdish in the shower tomorrow" (3 years ago"
"We'll have a motion activated light in the driveway this summer" (12 years ago)

What can I say?
The rent is fabulous.

Four months and counting. And we're not allowed to fix things ourselves.

I live in Chicago. I have the BEST landlord I've ever had in my life. I've lived all over the country including Los Angeles, and I love this Mngmt. Co. A. Saccone and Sons. I call them when my buzzer isn't working and they have someone come that week. I had a few things break the first month I was there, and they had it fixed NEXT DAY. I couldn't be happier here in the Bucktown area of Chicago. But, I've had horror stories of having no heat, no A/C stuff like that in CA.

The landlord at my first place was wonderful - upgraded the flooring before we moved in (after we'd already agreed to take the place), came out same day to fix a broken toilet chain, and put brand-new front loaders in the basement when the old dryer died, sans quarter costs.

Then he sold the building. The building's buyer was incommunicado unless the rent was due. He wanted cash or a money order, asked for the rent early on two occasions, and once stalked us relentlessly the day before the first of the month because he was going out of town and needed the money to fund part of his vacation. During a huge thunderstorm, the ceiling in our back bedroom buckled and caved in. A week of on-and-off rain and multiple messages just cemented the urge not to renew our lease. When we moved into our last condo more than a month later, the ceiling still hadn't been repaired (and the carpet was a mildewed mess by then). He was in touch, however, to see when we planned on repainting the rooms we'd painted (yes, I'm serious).

Last we heard from our old neighbor downstairs, absentee landlord had someone lined up to move in the week after we left.

Once I had a landlord install a new stove very speedily, only to leave the old one sitting in the middle of my living room for three weeks.

Why just right now (!) I have a giant water leak bubble forming over my shower. Apparently they're not coming out until after Thanksgiving!

They said to call back if it burst, probably meaning mold and 50 year old plaster all over my shower.

My landlord is pretty good (not perfect, but very reasonable) about fixing things promptly. He owns the house I am renting (i.e. he is not a paid professional property manager) and so he actually cares what happens to it and he tries to maintain the house well. I tend to handle small things, but anything that requires cash or is an alteration, I let him handle. He responds within a day or two (depending on the severity of the problem) and handles most things within a couple of days, though there haven't been too many problems. When he responds, he lets me know the timeframe that he will address the problem if he can't get to it right away.

i recently called & the guy was there the next day. my last place took months if they ever even came.

My landlord is awesome. He fixes things for me quickly and when I asked him if he could put a piece of wood on the bottom of the front gate so my small dog wouldn't get out, he did it!! He also walked around the fence to see if there were any other spots that my dog could get out of and he patched those up too. He also installed a super cool chandelier, that I paid for, in the bedroom for free!!

He's great and I think its because he lives next door and is renovating that house so he's already in 'fix-it mode' anyway. I've had crappy landlords before, so I'm thankful I got a good one

When I first moved in I had a giant hole in my bathroom for months where a medicine cabinet was supposed to go. He lets me fix minor things though and if it's anything urgent like when my hot water went out last week, he's very speedy.

It took my landlord two weeks just to replace some lightbulbs. I have cockroaches and they told me I have to wait a full week for the exterminator. I complained about the noise from the boiler room for weeks before they even tried to fix it (and failed). It takes forever to get even the simplest thing done. And then they have the nerve to tell me I am underpaying for the unit! I didnt know cockroaches had a dollar value...

Being a student I'm used to getting taken for a ride by landlords. They don't seem to trust anyone because of the terrible conditions that most students leave their apartments in. F my roommates and I, who keep a very nice house, it makes our lives terrible. This year alone we've had a toilet break twice, our bathroom ceiling completely cave in, a window blow out shards of glass all over the living room because of shoddy construction and high winds, and a gas leak, all serious issues that took at least 3 days to be seen to.
For other problems such as a non-working doorbell, windows that don't close all the way, or sockets that don't work, we're lucky if we have those problems seen to in 2 months. We've learned that we have to use the word "emergency" in describing any maintenance problem or we're ignored for months. We're not bad tenants - we gave the house a complete interior overhaul and were on the verge of submitting it for the Fall Colors Contest - but our landlords just don't seem to care about our situation.

Not all students are slobs!

It took my building manager eight weeks to redo a six-by-nine bathroom. Walls and ceiling had to go because of water damage. He literally worked an hour a day on the project, two or three days a week. Meanwhile, I'm "bathing" in the kitchen. I was very patient until about Week 6, when I came home from work and found the toilet in the hallway. "Why didn't you do that while I was at work?" "Man, I'm doin' this for you." I ended up buying and installing the light fixtures and towel bars myself . . . and tipping him $100! Needless to say, I do all small repairs myself.

My landlord has been very quick to repair major things. Last winter our furnace quit on us during a very cold spell, and he was in the next morning (we called at 10 pm) with someone to fix it.

Our washing machine almost caught on fire and he was in 2 days later to repair the motor.

For small things, he doesn't really worry about them, but he says we can fix them if we feel we need to. We'll be installing new weatherstripping on our front door and probably replacing some light fixtures temporarily (we'll put the old ones back when we decide to move).

I have no complaints. He's much better than any landlord I've had before, that's for sure.

Ours is probably a typical London landlord, he gets his money and that is all that matters to him. We had a major leak from the apartment above us (read: water streaming down one wall of our kitchen and from the ceiling) and he didn't even get back to us until 2 weeks after it began. Took him 1 year to get all the damage repaired but that was not before the ceiling had partially collapsed!

Let's just say that there are definitely downsides to renting...

I don't miss my old place. It was like pulling teeth to get anything repaired. He promised to replace the carpet prior to us moving in. He did.....but with a barely better carpet from another apartment, placed on top of the old one. Only one element on the stove worked, which he thought was more than sufficient. We had no screen in our bedroom window. I asked repeatedly for him to put one in. Eventually, a squirrel came into my room in the wee hours of the morning, and I put my foot down and approached him in the hall while he was showing potential new tenants the building. He put in a screen pretty fast after that. Except he didn't. He covered half the window with chicken wire, and instructed me to keep the window half closed because he didn't have a big enough piece of "screen" to fill the whole window.

I dont know why I put up with that guy for as long as I did.

our new landlord makes me feel like i've died and gone to heaven. since moving in, what, two months ago, we had a closet door that lost a screw and fell off the track, and a leaky bathroom sink pipe, and each time it took them two days tops to send the same little old man to fix it. yeay! they even replaced the old window screens in our apartment without my even complaining.

our last landlord treated us like we were just jerk students who didn't know a leaky pipe from our a**holes. i'm so glad we moved - i was sick of paying thousands of dollars to someone who was treating me like a three-year-old. good riddance!

PS - i have a friend who rents his apartment from a couple who live in africa (?!), and their toilet(s) recently stopped running properly. when they called the person listed as the property maintenance manager, he said he wasn't in charge of maintenance in their building. now they have to wait to get an e-mail (!!!) back from their MIA landlords. hoo boy.

We waited for almost a month for our shower to be fixed. Otherwise, our landlord replaced our kitchen faucet within a week.

It takes him to fix things, including the lawn maintenance (which is on the contract), a few days of holding the rent payment to get things done. We learned this the hard way, had to wait a few months before he cut the lawn, but we already paid for it, so for now on, no payment until the lawn is cut. And as for fixing other things, also learned the hard way, now we pay the job and then discount it from the rent if he doesn't get the job done on time.

PS
my previous landlord was heaven-sent. Whenever I had a problem he had this guy who was always on top of things and fixed everything the same day.

I live in Chicago and have been in the same apartment for 2 years. My landlord started out great and seemed so nice. Last summer, my heater (furnace) broke and smelled like gas. He tried to get people to fix it but it didn't work so he turned the gas line off. Summer is always hot so it didn't matter. The same thing happened again this year. Now it is in the low 40's at night and low 50's during the day and I had to remind him to FIX IT because it is cold. He said he forgot because he had a family wedding a few months earlier (which has nothing to do with my heat being broken for 4 weeks) and he had been on vacation...He seems to over-promise and under-deliver on major things. I'm looking for a new apartment. I can't belive guys like him get away with this all the time. (Keep in mind, there are other things broken around here that he has promised to fix for 1-2 years...I always remind him and he says he'll be by on a certain date or will call me... Yeah, right.