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Gardner problems in rental house

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C

crc9998

Guest
Our landlord just fired the gardners' that have been taken care the house we are renting. He has advised us that we need to start mowing the lawn, cutting bushs' (that is all the gardners did), in return he deducted $25 from our rent. However, he is wanting us to invoice the $25 and include it with our rent check, every month. My question is, in doing this, can he use it as a tax write off?? Would we have to claim it as income?? Also, the gardners have never cut the trees back, and when we informed him that they needed to be trimmed, he told us it was our responsiblity since we are now in charge of the lawn up keep. One last question, 2 weeks after we moved in, our plumbing backed up into our sinks and toilets. We tried to contact him (it was on a Sunday), we left 2 messages at his answering service. After waiting for 4 hours and never hearing from him (with a 1 week old infant at home), we called a professional service, ourselves. We paid the $$ up front for the service. When we spoke with him the next day, he said that since we did not use his "guy" we would have to split the costs. When we explained that we did try and get a hold of him (he even verified it with the answering service), he still made us pay half. Is this right?? or did we get stuck with expenses we should not have been stuck with??
 


T

Tracey

Guest
You don't have to accept the $25/month lawn care "contract". Your lease doesn't say you have to deal with the lawn. Does it say that L takes care of the lawn? At any rate, lawn care by a professional service is considerably more than $25/month. And you are correct, if you pay rent & invoice the $25, you'll have to declare it as income. And pay taxes on it. You do not have to accept this deal if you don't want to.

Even for emergency repairs like plumbing backing up, L has to have a reasonable amount of time to repair. Giving L only 4 hours is not reasonable on your parts. L would have been within his rights not to pay any of the plumbing costs. Paying 1/2 was generous of him.

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This is not legal advice and you are not my client. Double check everything with your own attorney and your state's laws.
 

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