[NH] Least Termination Letter - Best Way To Do It?
to make a long and personal-detail story short, i used to be roommates with my landlord. we were good friends prior to everything that follows. the rest are details related to why i want to deliver this letter.
he owns the house i am in. he promised to have it "new tenant" ready when he moved out and i fully took over leasing. that said, he did anything but that. i had to get rid of so much abandoned houseware and trash (donations, yard sales, legitimate dump runs and money spent). his claim was that because i was already living in a room upstairs he didn't have the "month grace period he would have if he was renting it out in August". i get that, but he also.. didnt end up remedying anything.
well it's august and the house has a new black mold diagnosis, which was only discovered after the plumbing immediately fucked over and he wasnt doing anything about it. the kitchen sink has no range and only outputs boiling hot water. he knew this as early as the first week of July because he tried to mess with it, and nothing changed. we have someone living downstairs where the mold was spotted, which he also knew because he knows the guy who lives down there and rented to him before i took over. but he was refusing to come out himself and kept claiming that because none of us could be home for an inspector, it just needed to be on our time.
i ended up needing to cold-call the state to just get an idea of an inspector, then had to inform him that if he wouldn't be helping us, i needed to file a complaint to get our plumbing and mold inspected. that's when he got help involved. i also had us transition strictly to email correspondence, because he would blow up our phones or would claim XYZ was never said to him (all of the things were indeed said to him).
he was willing to only pay for one of the three repairs the plumbers identified needed to be done and took another repair on for himself. the third repair is an inevitable but future fix, but the other part that needed replacing was the same make, model, and age as what we have left, so its a matter of time.
the plumbers were not impressed by his demeanor because they essentially told me he will screw it up, and when he does, they will be back. the mold inspector told us to be careful and to limit our time downstairs. both the mold inspector and my landlord know someone lives down there, and that is just an insane thing to hear from an inspector who didnt even have the results yet. dude took one look and went "well.. that's not good". people who were helping my landlord move out also know the spot exists, and have referenced it.
the extent of work that needs to be done will ultimately impact our stay here, which is on a one year lease and he already told me he plans to do month-to-month once our year ended. he also claims, a lot of the time, that he "doesnt have XYZ dollars" and is always referencing that he is broke. his buddy who is also my buddy has told me, "Landlord is not broke". but my Landlord has not left me confident in feeling that he can actually pay for bigger, costly repairs, which the mold inspector told us we are looking at because the whole basement wall is gonna need replacing. also a foundation leak and etc, so just a lot of unforeseen work. i should also mention that we are more or less paying off his mortgage for him by living here, which i quickly recognized seeing the renters amount and realizing his month-to-month lease allows him to sell once we finish that.
it feels like, and it's been made aware to me, that he is taking advantage of the fact we are friends and is foregoing a lot of things "actual tenants" would have been on his ass about. he was pretty comfortable letting a lot of things slip, or not actually doing what i've asked, until it old him the state would become involved and i really didnt want to do that but it was not safe for us to have the conditions we did.
as you can imagine this has really fucked our friendship because i need to inform him of the state of the house. at this point, i dont feel comfortable being his tenant, and admittedly don't even have the confidence he'll take care of the things he needs to. and, if my lease is up at the end of June and we are looking at weeks of repair (he claimed to want to have people come and redo an upstairs bathroom), our tenancy is essentially a huge part impacted by repairs. I feel like the unforeseen mold and foundation problems, the excessive plumbing care, his constant claims to be "too broke", and etc, are all reasonable enough grounds to deliver such a letter.
we were friends, once upon a time, and feel that he might be open to the idea of this if we all admit we are cutting our losses but us more than him. he has another place to live and ultimately whatever he wants to sell this place for, he would get to put into his new home. $800k but doesnt have money to pay off or repair his shitbox.. but it is what it is...
please do not lecture me about "what could happen if i break lease early". we know, we do not care we will be moving anyway and hopefully part ways from this as minimally financially injured as possible.
i just would like to know what goes into a letter like that? should i include reasons? some websites say dont put your reasons, some say i should.
is it reasonable to ask for a rent reduction (currently over 3k and shoulda been my first clue im getting played) given the house is a total shitbox, or should i just eat the cost but let him know we are moving out with the letter?
thanks for anyone who bothered to read this whole mess, i appreciate you.