Leased an incomplete commercial building and landlord is not finishing I leased a commercial building that was currently being built. At the time the physical structure had been completed and all that was left was connecting water and electricity to the building. In the lease agreement we stipulated that rent would be 50% off until the building received full services and then the full rent payment would be due. There was a verbal agreement that the process of &quot;hooking up the water and electric&quot; should take no longer than a few weeks. It's now been over 3 months since the lease was signed and the building still does not have services. The landlord is slowly installing services but there seems to be a lack of urgency in getting things done. For example, he passed inspection for electric on April 1rst but has yet to schedule a time to put in the utility pole to get electrical service (as of April 29th). I cannot run my business without the electric and water hooked up. I understand there was no stipulation on when or if the electric and water would be installed in the lease agreement, but I'm wondering what I should do in this case. I cannot use the property for my business, nor can I get it insured for theft until electric is installed. My ideal situation would be that I would recover the amounts that I have paid beyond the first month and discontinue payments until full water and electric is available. This property is ideal for my type of business and it may be difficult to find another due to market circumstances in my area. The least ideal situation would be to continue paying half rent on a building I can't use indefinitely until the lease term is up.
In the lease agreement we stipulated that rent would be 50% off until the building received full services and then the full rent payment would be due. Ouch. I bet the lease agreement also says something like &quot;no other agreements verbal or otherwise are in effect for this agreement.&quot; So what you did was release the landlord from the responsibility to make the building habitable. Pretty sure you will need a lawyer to unwind this.
Is there a law requiring a landlord to respond to rental agencies request for information in regards to previous tenants? No. There is no such law.
First of all, the amount involved is probably a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand: if you do not pay it is extremely unlikely that your roommate will attempt to recover. Even if they do, they will probably fail - 30 days notice is 30 days notice: unless last month was February, the 8th to the 8th is either 30 or 31 days, you have complied with the terms of the lease. If the lease had said "one named months notice" then your roommate may have a case; as it is, they don't. Is he right? No. Is there ever a case where I'm liable for pro-rated rent beyond the 30 day notice period? Only if it says so in the lease. Do I owe him rent for each day in November that the room is vacant beyond the 8th? No Would a judge make an exception in his favor since I didn't tell him I was looking for a new place to live? Judges don't make exceptions, particularly not in anybody's favour. The role of a judge is to enforce the law - not to make exceptions to it. A judge would give effect to the terms of the contract except where those terms are prohibited or against public policy.
Unless there is some surprise in the wording of your contract, you have no realistic legal recourse. You had a hope that the warranty could provide something which it does not provide. A "reasonable person" would read the wording of the contract and understand that it requires pre-approval, and does not include an exception clause "unless it gets really cold". You could hire a lawyer to sue them and maybe a judge would find against the company on some social policy grounds, i.e. the contract is against public policy (after all, under landlord-tenant laws, in the analogous situation the landlord would be obligated to fix the heat problem). Since these contracts are quite widespread and well-known, and legislatures have not declared them illegal, it is safe to conclude that there is no public policy being violated. So even if a sympathetic judge were to rule in your favor, it would be overruled on appeal. If the warranty company delayed processing your request in order to get you to blink and break the terms of the contract, that could be held to be a bad-faith dealing. It is more likely that it is just a very slow process, slower than the average HVAC contractor, who would buy full-price replacements and have many workers on call to address your needs.
If the landlord has a right to charge a late fee (and that late fee is not a penalty) then that right accrues from the instant that the rent is late i.e. any time after 5:00:00 pm precisely if that is the time stated in the lease. If only a day is stated then it would be midnight. For case law on the penalty doctrine see PACIOCCO &amp; ANOR v AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED [2016] HCA 28 which involved a challenge to a bank charging late payment fees on credit cards.
The possession is not adverse during the tenancy, so the clock does not run. If the tenancy contract ends or is violated for [appropriate length depending on location] with no reaction from the landlord, that is grounds for adverse possession.
The right to adequate housing is a political question, the content of which is unclear in the UN's fact sheet. What they say is: All beneficiaries of the right to adequate housing should have sustainable access to natural and common resources, clean drinking water, energy for cooking, heating and lighting, sanitation and washing facilities, food storage facilities, refuse disposal, site drainage and emergency services. Sanitation facilities are not completely ignored, so there is a theoretical basis to start from. However, that list of desiderata is not legally enforceable, so it would depends on the laws of the particular jurisdiction. In the state of Washington (US), a rental that lacked any sanitary facility (toilet) would be a violation of the health code: even hot water is required by law. In other countries, esp. where running water is not ubiquitous, there may be no legal obligation for a landlord to provide a toilet with running water. Whether legal action could be taken against the landlord depends on local law. A property owner can evict a tenant, subject again to local law. Usually, it requires a legal process where the owner petitions the court to evict the tenant, and in case the tenant has a contractual right to be there, the owner has to show cause (tenant breached the terms of the lease). A landlord does not generally have an obligation to find alternative housing for a tenant, but perhaps there is such a law somewhere, related to tenant tenure. The mention of a co-owner is a bit confusing. If A is the sole owner of a property, A can exercise landlord rights. If A and B both own the property, either of them can exercise landlord rights. However, if they disagree, i.e. A wants to evict tenant C and B wants to let C stay, the dispute between A and B must be resolved, and if they cannot come to an agreement then B can cause a delay of the eviction until the dispute is resolved in court. Again, the details on this would depend on the jurisdiction, and in part whatever landlord-tenant laws there are.
Can my water district's billing practices still be legal? They are likely to be legal, but it isn't entirely clear. Contract Law ETo data is not published in advance of billing, which seems to violate Contract Law's notion of agreement between parties. A contract can set forth a formula for determining a price, rather than a particular dollar amount. For example, my utility company charges me a rate for electricity and natural gas that is based upon the market price of those commodities that it has to pay (although since my utility is a regulated utility, it has to get approval from a government agency each time it does so to confirm that it is really charging the market rate). Similarly, in the construction industry, and in government contracts, &quot;cost plus&quot; contracts that charge based upon whatever is spent to get the job done plus a market up by the general contractor, are not uncommon. Proposition 218 The Proposition 218 analysis is trickier. This is clearly not a tax or an assessment. So the threshold question is whether this is a Property Related Fee. In December of 2018 a legislative analysis stated that: A fee is a charge imposed on an individual or business for a service or facility provided directly to an individual or business. Local governments charge fees for a wide range of purposes, from park entry fees to building plan check fees. The amount of the fee may not exceed the cost of government to provide the service. Proposition 218 restricts property-related fees, defined as fees imposed &quot;as an incident of property ownership.&quot; At this time, there is no consensus as to which fees meet this definition. The drafters of Proposition 218 indicate that it was their intent to include most fees commonly collected on monthly bills to property owners, such as those for water delivery, garbage service, sewer service, and storm water management fees. Other analysts of Proposition 218 contend that fees that vary by level of service (for example, a fee for metered water usage) should not be considered a property-related fee, because it is based on service usage, rather than property ownership. Because Proposition 218 does not restrict nonproperty-related fees, the definition of this term will be an important and sensitive issue for the Legislature and courts. But, the California Supreme Court clarified this in July of 2006 in the case of Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency v. Verjil, ruling that metered rates for consumption of water are “property-related fees” subject to Proposition 218. So, assuming that your Water District is a governmental agency and not just a private company like a Ditch Company from which you receive privately owned water because you have shares in it, Proposition 218 should apply. This leads to the second question: Does the amount of the fee exceed the cost of government to provide the service? This is a non-trivial question with lots of ambiguities associated with it, that are fundamentally accounting issues, regarding the level of generality at which you analyze it. At the most general level, the water district clearly isn't allowed to collect more in fees in the aggregate than is necessary for it to break even from purchasing the water from someone and conducting its operations (assuming that it is a governmental entity). But, assuming that this threshold is met, the question is then how much discretion the water district has to allocate its costs, many of which are fixed costs that benefit all of the people in the water district, to particular users. It sounds from the question as if some of its costs involve purchasing water from a wholesaler, and some involve things like distributing that water to individual customers, metering usage, invoicing customers and collecting payments. Also, another question of generality is over what time period costs have to match services. At a fairly broad level of generality, perhaps it is permissible to match fees to cost on an annual basis. Certainly, the matching doesn't have to be any more specific than for an individual billing cycle, but it isn't obvious that this much precision in timing is required. Almost certainly, the water district is entitled to some deference in how it decides to allocate costs to services when there is more than one reasonable way to do so. Very likely, the water district evaluated its billing policy with its municipal attorney in light of Proposition 218 when it adopted this system and obtained an opinion of counsel that its plan was compliant. Indeed, it probably has covenants in its municipal bond offerings that require it to do so. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the water district's billing policy blatantly and unambiguously violates Proposition 218, even though it make be pushing the envelope with a billing scheme that isn't clearly allowed or clearly forbidden by court precedents that are factually similar. If that is the case, you might find a lawyer willing to bring a class action lawsuit to test the validity of the billing system, but it would likely be a long and difficult case with an uncertain outcome that the water district is more likely to win than you are, although it still might be a technical violation. Given the small stakes you have in the question with your own relatively small water bill, and the high stakes that the water district has in justifying its billing system for all of its customers, it is hard to see how this would be an economic battle for you to fight.