So my husband and I moved into this house in August. WE are just renting until we get everything right to buy a house. When we moved, we asked the landlord if he lived in this house and decided to rent it out now. He said no, he never lived here. The previous tenants had been here for two years and moved out the day before we moved in. They told us he has a couple of other properties he rents out as well.
When we moved in and did the walkthrough with the landlord, we noticed that the patio door would not close all the way. This is of course a safety concern and we wanted it fixed right away. It took him until the day before Thanksgiving to fix it. In that time we also noticed the master bathroom shower leaked down to the half bath in the basement. The ceiling and wall to that bathroom were destroyed and had to be taken down. The guy who came to fix it said the floor of the master bath would have to be completely redone because the wood was rotted and mildewed and the tiles was all cracked. They fixed the ceiling and the wall of the half bath but said we couldn't use the shower in the master bath because it would leak down and mess up the half bath again. The floor was supposed to be fixed the next week. That was in November as well. Nothing has been done. We have now discovered another leak in the ceiling of he basement and we have no idea where it's coming from. We called the landlord and told him about it yesterday and he said he would send someone to take a look but no one showed.
So today I go online a start Googling to see if I can find any complaints or anything about him. He had one of his other properties foreclosed on in May 2006 for non payment of taxes and it just was transferred to the city in December. He has this residence listed as his principal residence even though he bought it in 2004 and he has never lived here. He also has the house where we send his rent checks listed as him principal residence as well (I do believe this is actually where he lives). The previous tenants told us he recently (in the past year) refinanced this house.
Now my understanding is that you can not have 2 principal residences. Also, if he refinanced this house as his principal residence as opposed to his rental property isn't that fraud? He would be getting the tax benefits of both houses without having to pay the higher interest rate and such for investment properties, right?
So here are my questions:
1. Do we have any legal recourse with the maintenance issues? Can we get out of our lease? We have a bathroom we can't use and probably a bunch of mildew floating around the house. I have two small children and I don't want to mess around with mildew and/or mold.
2. Is the way he is doing business (2 principal residences one of which he never lived in) illegal? I'm not planning on getting him in trouble; I just want to know for my own personal information.
We were planning on staying here until we ready to buy a house (3-4 years) but in light of these things we are definitely leaving. I just want to know how soon we can do that.




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