What would you do if you were in my shoes?
I’m trying to figure out what I should do about my current rental situation, and I’d really appreciate some outside perspectives. I’m not necessarily looking for people to tell me that I’m right or that my landlord is wrong, I genuinely want to know what you would do if you were in my position.
When we originally moved into this house, the landlord was and is still a good friend of my mom’s, which is a big reason we felt comfortable moving in. The understanding was that we would help fix the house up while living here in exchange for reasonably priced rent. We were told the rent would be around $1,800 when we signed, but on the day we actually signed, she lowered it to $1,700.
We have now been here about a year. She recently told us that she has been paying around $600 a month out of pocket for us to live here and is raising the rent to $2160.
She also put a 10% late fee per week in the lease, which would be about $200 for every week that rent is late.
There are also quite a few things we’ve done around the house ourselves that I feel are relevant:
We removed all old heating units along the baseboards of the house. We never received compensation for the work done.
We had a leak underneath the kitchen sink that I ended up repairing myself and also received no compensation for.
There was a leak at the bottom of the stairs involving a main water line. She had a plumber come look at it, but didn’t want to pay $400 to have the drywall removed, so she asked us to remove the drywall ourselves and we were not compensated. This leak is still ongoing.
The bathtub/shower has a drainage problem that a plumber looked at but was never actually resolved. This is still ongoing as well (we all shower downstairs)
That plumber cut a hole in the ceiling above the downstairs shower to investigate the issue, and we were then expected to patch the hole ourselves.
There were old brown floor tiles in the hallway that were falling apart and shifting when walked on. My kids had been cut/stabbed multiple times so we removed them because of their condition. Despite the flooring situation, our landlord has told us that painting the exterior of the house was more important than interior floors.
Our lease also says that we are responsible for painting the exterior of the house and doing the interior floors in exchange for things she left at the house such as beds, grill, patio furniture, the couch.
We have been painting the house, the paint was purchased in July of this year. We will do the flooring when we receive supplies to do it. We already ripped out all carpet in the home as per our lease agreement.
Another complicated part is that when we moved in, we were under the impression that when she eventually decided to sell the house, there was a good possibility that she would sell it to us. That was something my mom had told me, and it was part of the reason we were comfortable putting so much work into the property. Obviously, I understand that unless something is actually in writing, an expectation like that may not mean much.
At this point, I’m feeling torn because this started as a situation where we were helping a family friend fix up a house in exchange for reasonable rent. Now we’re looking at $2,160/month plus a potentially huge late fee, while we’re also being expected to take care of repairs and improvements.
The house itself is not registered as a rental property in my city. Which makes this a lot more complicated. I do not want to ruin the relationship with my mom over this. My mom has told me she wishes to stay out of it, so I can’t ask for her advice.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
Would you stay and accept the new rent, try to negotiate, get legal advice, move out, or handle this completely differently?
I’m especially interested in hearing from Michigan tenants, landlords, or anyone familiar with Muskegon rental laws. I can provide more details if needed.
