To djdj - additional info
Dear djdj,
Thanks for responding and offering your help! I must have been really tired when I wrote my original post, when I re-read it today, I realized I left out the most important part. Your advice based on this additional info would be much appreciated! For your reference, I included the original post at the bottom.
The part I left out is as follows and I'll give you the brief version. Since we moved in, our landlord has always come by the shop to pick up the rent sometime within the 1st or 2nd week of the month. The month before last it got to be past the middle of the month and he hadn't shown up yet. Most of the time we pay in cash and get a receipt, but since it was getting so late in the month I wrote out a check instead and dropped it throught the mail slot aat his office. Enclosed with the check, I also included a letter explaining this and asked that in the future, if he would not be coming by to pick up the rent, to contact us and let us know so we wouldn't be waiting around for him. Never heard a word. This month same exact thing, only as I was just about to write out a check and bring it down there, a guy shows up at the door and hands me a 3 day pay or quit AND a 30 day notice. The combination of those two notices appear to me to be the equivalent of a pay "and" quit, not a pay "or" quit - am I right? The reason listed on the 30 day notice for breaking the lease has nothing to do with the rent issue, it reffers to item 3 and 4 on the addendum which are having business and extended liability insurance and the other refers to tenant improvements being the responsibility of the tenant with landlord approval. The only "visible" changes we have made are cosmetic ones, namely, putting up a mailbox because there wasn't one and carpeting the floor in the bathroom and office (he said he would do the bathroom but never did and it was not presentable to clients not to mention, sanitary, so we did it) He has been in this place numerous times and always commented on how great it looked - never once had a complaint and in fact, encouraged us to keep up the good work. And now this! And as for the insurance, we have tried to get insurance but all of the insurance company's want us to have a fire safety check before they will insure it. My brother is a fireman and I had him down here to look at the building (informally)and he says it is far from acceptable and would cost alot to get it up to par. At this point, we've had it with this guy and want out of this money pit. We have found another building but the present tenant is in the process of moving out so we may not be able to move into it before the 30 day deadline and would like to avoid having him file eviction papers with the court. So here are my questions...
1) How do I proceed? More specifically, we want to move but may need more time. Out of all of the things I have mentioned, which ones are the strongest for negotiating leverage.
2) Doesn't he have to be more specific on the 30 day notice and list exactly what has been done that he is opposed to?
3) The reason I asked #2 is because I know he is going to try to keep our deposit (which is A LOT of $$$$)and I want to avoid that. How do I avoid loosing it?
4) Any other thoughts/advice you may have.
You have no idea how much I appreciate your help! None of the local agencies say they can help because it is a commercial lease and not residential - you are my last resort!!! Thank you for your time.
kas said:
I have a commercial lease on a building for 1 1/2 years of which we have been here 8 months. After moving in, many "hidden" problems started exposing themselves for example, no phone lines to the building - we had to run them ourselves, the framing in the walls is done with 2x2's (not 2x4's) that are running horizontally (no studs running vertically), inside the walls we found melted electrical wiring - upon further investigation by an electrican friend we found that 80% of the electrical load fed off of one leg of the sub-panel - huge fire hazzard!! Basically, the place is one huge code violation, not to mention fire/disaster waiting to happen. We also found out that part of the building (the unit next to us) had burned to the ground a little over a year ago - I wonder why!! And to top it all off, a guy came by a couple of months after we moved in thinking that we were the new owners of the building, complaining about the new fence in the back yard. The fence is about 20 feet from the back of the building, come to find out that the property line ends 3 feet from the back of the building. This was a major issue for us when we rented the place because we run an auto repair shop and need room to park cars. The landlord never mentioned that he was squatting on someone else's property. Those are just a sample of the major things, there are more. Considering all of this, can we get out of our lease without a legal hassel? Any advice would be much appeciated, also any references to commercial lease info would also be helpful!! Thanks for your time.
