Tenants deal with apartment woes

Students deal with stress from several different aspects of the college lifestyle. Learning time management, choosing between class and happy hour, money issues, and incompatible roommates are just a few of the causes of this stress. There is another aspect of college life that many students are not prepared to deal with.
Once they have done their required time in the residence halls, many students decide to move off-campus and rent properties within the Milledgeville community. Renting may seem to be an exciting step for students in their quest for independence, but it can quickly become an added stress for those who are unaware of their rights and responsibilities as renters.
There are several problems and issues with which a student renter could possibly be confronted while they are renting a property. A pipe could bust causing flooding in the bathroom, an emergency comes up and a tenant may need to move immediately, or the landlord always seems to stop by when a renter is just stepping out of the shower. Most students are ignorant to the procedures of requesting maintenance, penalties for breaking a lease and whether they should be notified before the landlord enters the property.
“I have rented five different places, with five different landlords, since I moved to Milledgeville in 2002,” said Chris Voellinger, a senior business major at GCSU.  “The reasons that I moved from my first three apartments dealt with disputes my roommates and I had with the landlords not repairing things we had asked them to. One of them tried to blame us for the damages our dogs made, when actually the damage was there when we moved in.”
Getting a landlord to make repairs is one of the most common issues into which many students run when renting a home or apartment. Many student renters may shrug off repairs that should be made because they are not sure whether it is their responsibility to fix the problem or the responsibility of the landlord.
According to the Landlord-Tenant Handbook, which was made available by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, “the landlord has a responsibility to keep the rental property in repair.” This includes keeping the “building structure, roof, heating, and plumbing operational” and the landlord must comply with local ordinances and minimum safety standards. The landlord is not responsible for damages incurred by the tenant, their household members, guests or visitors.
Most landlords are willing to do repairs because, logically, the property is theirs and it benefits them to keep it up.
“As a landlord I want to take care of my property, the only problem that I have run into concerning repairs is renters not reporting things in a timely fashion,” said Robert Binion, a landlord who owns about 10 properties in Milledgeville, which he mainly rents to students. “If I can deal with the issue when it’s minor, instead of when it is major, it saves time and money.”
The easiest way to make a request for repair to a landlord is by phone or possibly e-mail. But the Atlanta Legal Aid Society advises tenants on their Web site, www.atlantalegalaid.org, to make a written repair request in addition to other forms of contact and to keep copies of all written requests made. According to the Web site, if the landlord does not make the repairs within a reasonable amount of time, the renter has the option of suing or they can make the repair themselves or hire someone to make the repair and subtract the cost out of their rent for the next month.
“When we were trying to get our heater fixed in one of the first apartments I rented, my roommate would always type up what we said in our requests we left on our landlords answering machine,” said Valerie Blum, a junior history major at GCSU. “Finally we got tired of freezing and hired someone to fix it and paid for it on our own. But we subtracted the cost from our rent and sent him all of our request documentation, so there wasn’t much that he could say.”
Another common issue student renters run into is not knowing the proper procedures when leaving a lease or the penalties of breaking a lease early. Most leases specify 60 to 30 days written notice when planning to break a lease before the date designated within the lease. Some landlords will incur a penalty for breaking the lease before the date in the lease, such as not returning the security deposit. But many leases vary and some landlords are more willing to work with renters in different situations.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 3 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry