Odd utility billing in Florida by property management companies Here in Florida there's been a migration in the way tenants of apartments are billed water, trash, sewer, and pest control. It used to be that the local municipality billed the tenant directly for their exact usage. Now, management companies are using 3rd party billers, of which there's a marked increase in the cost of utilities. There are two popular methods of calculating these utility costs applied by most management companies. The first is to bill for exact usage. In this case the management company receives your metered bill, pays it, and then has the tenant billed by the 3rd party which is then added to the rent payment. The second is to use an algorithm to "share" the cost among tenants. In these cases the algorithm varies but in all cases the tenants who use less pay for the tenants who use more (this is always included in an addendum to the rental agreement). Regardless of the method, management companies refuse to show the original bill so that the tenant can independently verify that they're being charged the correct amount. Further, many will lie and claim they have nothing to do with the charges and that it's completely controlled by the 3rd party biller. Does the tenant have a right to see the bill and verify that the required payment is correct? What remedies might be available to the tenant in Florida should the first question prove true (and the landlord or management company refuse to provide documentation)?
My guess is the answer to this question is going to be in your lease. You likely signed a lease that agreed that you would pay accept this practice and spelled out what ever rights you have to challenge the billings. My guess is they are as limited as the courts will allow in Florida. And the only way to ensure access to those records would be to get the court to compel they provide you with the records. Perusal of the Water codes in Florida does not appear to directly engage this practice(I could have missed it). However it appears that there is code regulating the management of electrical limits the billing to no more than the actual costs to the customer of record(probably your real estate management company.) According the the NCSL (This refers to electrical service. I am assuming there is similar language used elsewhere for plumbing, or that the intent of the law is uniformity of these codes in all utility billings. Where individual metering is not required and master metering is used in lieu thereof, reasonable apportionment methods, including submetering may be used by the customer of record or the owner of such facility solely for the purpose of allocating the cost of the electricity billed by the utility. The term “cost” as used herein means only those charges specifically authorized by the electric utility's tariff, including but not limited to the customer, energy, demand, fuel, conservation, capacity and environmental charges made by the electric utility plus applicable taxes and fees to the customer of record responsible for the master meter payments. The term does not include late payment charges, returned check charges, the cost of the customer-owned distribution system behind the master meter, the customer of record's cost of billing the individual units, and other such costs. Any fees or charges collected by a customer of record for electricity billed to the customer's account by the utility, whether based on the use of submetering or any other allocation method, shall be determined in a manner which reimburses the customer of record for no more than the customer's actual cost of electricity. Each utility shall develop a standard policy governing the provisions of submetering as provided for herein. Such policy shall be filed by each utility as part of its tariffs. The policy shall have uniform application and shall be nondiscriminatory (Fla. Administrative Code §25-6.049). Now here is where the 3rd party comes in. The 3rd party is the one levying fees for the management on your landlord. Granted if you follow the strings ill bet you find that the billing company is owned by the same company that owns your rental management firm. So your landlord can collect no more than what it costs to provide you with the service, but part of providing the service is employing this 3rd party utility management firm.
De minimis only applies when you are actually dealing with the law, that is, someone ends up in court. I am unaware of any jurisdiction which makes it a crime to &quot;mishandle&quot; food waste. Usually, a company is granted a monopoly over waste management for residences in a certain jurisdiction, the government vaguely indicates what the service is supposed to do (sometimes because the recipient of the waste is a government-run waste facility), then the service communicates to customers what their policies will be. The use of &quot;should&quot; in such communications does not imply &quot;legally and enforceably must&quot;. The waste management business has a contract with the individual to provide specified services, which may for example &quot;imply&quot; that you are not allowed to throw yard waste in regular trash. If your trash contains a leaf of grass, that might technically be contrary to their policy, but the possibilities of a consequence for the individual depends on what is in the contract. It is possible that a surcharge can be added to a bill, but typically this only happens in the case of egregious and repeated violations, with multiple prior notices.
While I don't like agreeing with a landlord, you are in the right here. Your tenants do not have the right to access the property now they have moved out. If they were still living there things would be different and it would be reasonable for them to fix minor damage (to preserve their deposit). They did not do so. Get the damage fixed professionally, keep all reciepts, and take it out of the deposit.
Close family members can stay as long as the tenant wants The tenant is entitled to "quiet enjoyment" of the property which includes living with their close relatives - spouse, de facto and children would all qualify; parents and siblings might as well. It doesn't matter if these people are children or adults. You cannot contract out of this as you are not allowed to discriminate in housing based on family situation. The tenant is also entitled to have non-relative house guests stay for as long as is reasonable. A month or so would be reasonable; longer than that and it starts to look like a sub-lease for which they would need your permission. There is generally a limit under texas law of 3 adults per bedroom but that doesn't seem to be an issue here. I also can't see where having a non-resident's mail delivered to the property is something you have a say about. I'd be very careful if I were you because it seems like you are on the wrong side of the law here.
Jurisdiction: england-and-wales Preliminary issues Firstly, as some of the comments have highlighted, this could be a scam. I have personally come across such a scam on two occassions. The scammer rents a property short term (e.g. 2-3 weeks) on AirBnB. They then pose as a landlord or letting agent and advertise the same property as a long term let. They collect a deposit and rent from any person who wants to be a tenant. They may even copy the keys and give each &quot;tenant&quot; a set. On move in day, you arrive at the property to find that you are not the only person trying to move boxes in. It has always struck me that landlords are generally very careful to vet their tenants by checking ID, proof of address, obtaining references, and running credit checks. Yet tenants rarely do any vetting at all of their landlords. A very basic and easy check you can do is to purchase the title register (not title plan) for the property from the Land Registry. This costs £3 and will give you the name of the person who owns the property. If the property is an apartment then you will generally want the leasehold title register (not the freehold). Once you have the name, you can then ask your landlord to provide proof that they are that person. Secondly, you've tagged the question united-kingdom, but the UK is actually comprised of multiple legal jurisdictions and housing law varies among them (particularly in Scotland). I'm answering this on the basis of england-and-wales. Third, questions asking for legal advice on real situations are off-topic here. My answer will just address the general issues and shouldn't be taken as advice for your situation. Contract and due dates There is nothing in contract law which prevents obligations from arising before the date that the contract is agreed. It is not unusual for parties to draft contracts which govern past behaviour. In that sense, it is perfectly acceptable to agree a contract on 12 August which requires rent to have been paid on 8 August (albeit it would be inadvisable to agree such a contract as you would immediately be in breach if you had not already paid). On the other hand, a contract which purports to have been agreed on a date which is earlier than when it was actually agreed, can amount to fraud. I would be wary of a subsequent email which purports to allow a later due date which contradicts the contract. Unless there is a clause in the contract allowing for the landlord to postpone due dates, the email is unenforceable and your real due date is still 8 August. The attempt to change the due date is effectively a variation of the contract, and a variation which is not permitted in the contract itself needs to be executed as a second contract. That means you need all the elements of a contract: offer/acceptance, intention to be bound, and consideration. The problem here is the latter. The landlord is providing consideration (a later due date) but you are offering nothing in return. Holding the room &quot;The agent told me they cannot hold my room too long due to the high volume of interest in booking the rooms.&quot; &quot;Once you have signed this agreement you will be liable for the full rent set out in the agreement unless released from your tenancy by the Landlord or Management Company.&quot; These two positions are contradictory. If you agreed a tenancy (as implied by the second quote), then you have a contract which is legally binding on both parties. The first quote is incorrect - there is nothing to &quot;hold&quot; because the room is already yours. On the other hand, it may be that what you agreed was a holding deposit agreement (rather than a tenancy agreement) which is merely a commitment on the part of the tenant to forfeit a sum of money (which by law cannot exceed 1 week's rent) in the event that the tenant (as opposed to the landlord) decides not to proceed with the tenancy. The wording from the second quote (liability for full rent) implies that it is a tenancy agreement rather than a holding deposit agreement. Or, in the alternative, that it is an illegal holding deposit agreement which asks for more money to be forfeited than is lawful. You'll need to read your full contract to understand what it is. If it's a tenancy agreement, it will be obvious from the wording that you have actually rented the property. Obligation to pay rent &quot;My question is do I have any legal responsibility to pay for the entire rent by the new due date (25 August) for APT1?&quot; Unfortunately, if you have signed a tenancy agreement, then you are legally bound to fulfill your obligations under it (provided such obligations do not break the law). If it contains a clause stating that you must pay 51 weeks's rent, then that is what you must do. &quot;If they told me they cannot hold my booking any longer, do I need them to confirm in writing that I'm released from the agreement?&quot; As a general rule of contract law, nothing needs to be in writing unless (a) the law requires it to be in writing or (b) the contract requires it to be in writing. You agree non-written contracts all the time when you go shopping, use the bus, etc. The same applies to taking actions which are governed by a pre-existing contract e.g. giving your taxi driver verbal directions once you are en-route. The phrase &quot;unless released from your tenancy by the Landlord or Management Company&quot; says nothing about the release needing to be in writing; therefore it can be verbal (provided that there isn't another clause somewhere else in the contract which requires it to be in writing). Be aware however that verbal statements can be difficult to prove.
You could first look for a force majeure clause in the lease which says something about natural disasters and the like. If there is a clause which says e.g. "Landlord will not be held responsible for problems arising from ice storms", that doesn't help you, but maybe it specifies e.g. rent reduction of $2/day for lack of electricity. That doesn't mean he can ignore the law. However, in this situation, a particular reading of the law ("there must be an infallible supply of electricity") imposes an impossible requirement on the landlord, and the courts probably won't require a landlord to do the impossible. It is not clear that your situation violates either the letter or the spirit of the law. Take clause (d): your "heating facilities" presumably conformed to applicable law at the time of installation and have since been maintained, and they are adequate, but they don't work if the grid doesn't supply power (and that is not a matter under the landlord's control). In other words, he provided the "infrastructure", and the problem is on the power company's end. Likewise "electrical lighting with wiring and electrical equipment" -- an ordinary interpretation of that clause is "wires and fixtures", and doesn't include "flow of electrons", which is supplied by your local power company.
As you say, the roommate who was there "did not equate the sound of a running toilet with wasting water". That, I am afraid to say, is negligent: normally, when you hear constantly flowing water, you do something about it. Somebody has to pay for the water, and assuming the water is in your name, that is you. You could yell at the roommate, but legal negligence is irrelevant to the water bill. However, if there were any resulting damage (for example to wiring or walls), that is where the question of negligence would come up: you probably would be found liable for damage to the building that resulting from letting the condition persist. But unless the fill valve broke at the tank and leaked water onto the floor (which would be clearly obvious) there won't be any damage that you are liable for. I assume that the leak developed from an old part giving out. This would be normal wear and tear, for which you would not be responsible (assuming you didn't cause the problem, for example by putting concentrated bleach in the tank). You you are saying that the landlord is trying to charge you for the repairs, and on this point, the landlord is on thin ice. A landlord cannot just make up rules about assigning liability for damage: that is a matter to be determined by the courts. A tenant can do things to a fill valve that can cause a leak; and the seal has to be replaced every few years. The tenant is not liable especially for routine replacement of the fill value seal, and does not become liable because they failed to inform the landlord in a prescribed manner. Not reporting a leak within 24 hours does not contribute to the underlying failed part. You could probably contest the legality of that bit of maintenance clause 24, in that the landlord cannot unilaterally declare who is responsible for damage. At the trial, both sides will present relevant evidence, and the judge / jury will decide whether the tenant's negligence caused the seal to fail.
This would be pointless and wouldn't work. Eviction due to defaulting on rent requires the landlord to give 3 business days notice, in writing. This must include a method by which the tenant can settle their debt. Either the landlord would be forced to accept a payment or this would not be valid. Source Additionally, in this case, there is nothing stopping you physically handing an envelope of cash to the landlord as they live upstairs. However, there is no reason for your landlord to do this. If your landlord hates you that much it would be far easier for them to simply give you 60 days notice and terminate your tenancy that way.