r/Tenant

I rented a 1-bedroom apartment via a Broker last year and have been paying $2300/mo. I also paid $2300 as a commission to a broker. I'm 90% sure that this unit is rent-stabilized although not 100% sure.

Now I've received a lease extension contract that lists the new rent price at $1850 and change.

How could this be possible? While I'm glad for the price drop, I feel something fishy is going on here, and I may have been overcharged during the first year.

I have a couple of thoughts on this:

1. The broker could've screwed me over by adding a ~$500 surcharge on top of my monthly rent (which might've been $1800 for the first year, hence the current increase to $1850 for the renewal), however I don't see how they could've done it since the lease is between the landlord and the tenant (me) separately listing them as broker. I.e I don't have a lease "through" the broker.
2. The landlord might've overcharged me and realized that they've been overcharging and are trying to sweep this under the rug?

Any wisdom/advice on this?

Thanks!

Hello and thanks in advance for any and all replies.

I live in a 1 story duplex and the folks in the neighboring unit have proved that they have a german roach infestation. It seems that their issue has gotten pretty bad, as they have started to spill over into my unit. They have also proved that they are not keeping up with regular treatment from pest control (despite the landlord paying for it). I do get regular pest control and know I don’t have a breeding population, so I am less worried about them infesting my stuff. However, german roaches are probably my biggest fear as I have a lot of valuable electronics that I cannot replace.

I have asked my neighbor to schedule regular pest control, but they won’t and don’t believe that the issue is coming from their unit, despite it being the only other one on the property. They think the pest control won’t help since they’ve had some visits (2 exact) since moving in (many years ago) and they still keep coming back. They don’t seem to understand that it takes regular monthly visits to eradicate the issue.

Anyhow, I am wondering if the landlord can force them to get pest control? Or is this grounds for me to be let off the lease due to the treat of infestation? I unfortunately recently moved in and still have 9 months of my lease left. But I really do not want to deal with this and don’t know if i mentally can.

Please advise, and thanks in advance.

ps: i am not seeking pest control advice. I already know next to everything there is to know about how to deal with roaches and have had monthly sprays since moving in. Thanks.

Hi! On October 1st, my husband and I moved into a duplex in Ohio. We were asked by the landlord to put the power bill in our name and we called the company to do so. The power company told us that our power should have been off and that our meter was reading as not on in their system. There was power from the day we moved in. They sent a worker to come look at it and we were given a notice that the power would be shut off due to the meter being tampered with. Our landlord claims to not know what happened and is offering to take money off our rent if we stay in a hotel until the issue is resolved. I am not comfortable doing this, as we have just moved in and don’t have the funds to stay in a hotel for an undisclosed amount of time. Is there anything we can do about the electricity being off? If we are able to break out of the lease because of this, we would like to. Our landlord has been very flippant about the whole situation and it worries us about being here in the long term.

so my landlord passed away about two weeks ago. his siblings came by yesterday saying that they had papers saying that they would be the new landlords and we will have to start paying rent immediately (today is the 1st). they told us a broker would be coming in a few days to talk to us too. they told us that the house was left to one of the sisters and handed us a paper, but it was just a coroners note saying that they were given the body. they appointed one of the sisters to be the temporary landlord, but my mom does not want to give them the rent until there is a paper confirming the new owners. we have been renting in this house for 20 years, but there is no physical contract, we were living month to month and only have confirmed texts between my mom and our landlord about receiving the rent. the family told us that they want to start a new year lease contract, and my mom is afraid that in doing that they will take away any renters benefits we may have (if any) for living there for long. obviously we are very uneducated and are not sure of the laws and what to expect going forward. does anyone have any advice or suggestions?
UPDATE: sorry everyone, i live in california. i did put the state i was in but for some reason it cut it off in the original post. thank you so much for all of your advice, it has been very helpful!

[US-CA] I rent an apartment in Costa Mesa, California, and my landlord is demanding that I remove all plants from my second-story balcony because of weight concerns. They sit on a freestanding, removable plant stand that isn’t attached to the building. My lease doesn’t mention plants, balcony restrictions, or weight limits. She told me I can’t continue living there if I keep the plants. Can she enforce this, and how can I find out whether there’s an actual structural safety issue? I want to address any legitimate concern but also understand my rights.

Hey! I had an incident a week and a half ago where the maintenance man (Cody Sherman of Tricities) for my building broke and entered my apartment (Hudson West on Broadway) to ask me to have sex while my baby was sleeping right next to me. Greystar management company has not moved him out yet and he still works in the building. To be clear he lives and works in the building still. Even with a protective order in place Greystar refuses to fire or evict this guy (Cody Sherman from Tricities). Does anyone know what we can do? We were planning to sue Greystar for moving costs because so far they have not offered to help in any way. Cody also owns firearms and those have not been taken away. My husband and I are afraid he will get drunk again and shoot at us because he is drunk every night. Does anyone know what else we can do? Thank you! 🙏

Summary:

Moved out of a rental in Las Vegas, NV in late summer. Total deposits paid were just under $5,000 (security + cleaning + key deposit, per the lease).

On move-out day, when we handed over the keys in person, the landlord verbally told us he'd send the full deposit back via Zelle. About a month went by with no communication at all — I had to reach out and push him for an update. When I followed up again, I reminded him that he was already past the 30-day window and that Nevada law requires landlords to return the deposit (or provide an itemized accounting) within 30 days of move-out.

That's when he sent an itemized deposit statement showing several thousand dollars in deductions. The biggest single item — roughly $1,800–2,000 — is listed as an "HOA Violation" related to yard maintenance, with zero supporting documentation (no HOA letter, no invoice, nothing — just a line on his spreadsheet). Also when I pushed him more on the deposit, he started bringing up irrigation work that he never charged us for.

Key context:

• Rarely communicated with us. Whenever an issue happened at the property, I would ask him to come fix it, but he would either not show up at all or say he is showing up and then not show up.
• All HOA mail is addressed to the landlord's name, not mine — I never opened it (not my mail to open).
• HOA letters were sent to his property that I was renting instead of the house he currently lives in.
• I texted him over a year before I moved out letting him know there was HOA mail sitting at the house. He never responded about it, never mentioned a violation, and never brought it up even when he stopped by in person once during the lease. The HOA mail is about a dead bush in the yard so I pull out immediately.
• The first time I hear "HOA violation" is in this itemized statement — well over a year after I flagged the mail to him, and only after I had to push him past the legal deadline for the deposit.
• He's offered to pay the undisputed portion (a little over $2,000) right away; I've asked for the actual HOA invoice/notice for the larger charge and haven't received it yet.
• There's also a smaller discrepancy (a couple hundred dollars) between what the lease says I deposited and what his statement lists as my starting total.

Questions:

1. How strong is my case given the documented year-plus gap in communication, plus the fact that he initially promised full repayment in person and only itemized deductions after I pushed past the legal deadline?
2. Should I accept the partial payment now (with a written note reserving my right to dispute the rest), or hold off entirely?
3. At what point should I continue to negotiate with him vs just suing him in small claims court and serving him.

Hello guys,

Location: California

I’ve been apartment hunting lately, I went pretty far with one. I submitted my application, everything’s approved. We go back and forth for a few weeks because I weighed options.

So I ultimately decide this one is the best. I asked them to inspect the specific unit before lease signing. A few days before I was supposed to sign the lease, the manager tells me I need to pay a “security deposit” because other applicants were sending in applications and they needed that deposit to take the house out of market and reserve it for me.

I inspect the unit and find out I don’t love it. I tell them I’m not longer going to lease (I never signed the actual lease), and they tell me the “security deposit” is nonrefundable???

What do I even do this is so absurd.

Hi! Just curious on how easy it is to transfer leases? Do I have to talk to the landlord first, get written permission, and then find someone to transfer to, or is it easier to find someone and then let the landlord know that we'd like to transfer?

We signed a year-long lease in July (SoCal), and there's nothing functionally wrong with our unit, we just would like to find something a little bit more within our price range. No big deal if we have to stay, but just curious as to the feasibility of transferring leases.

So my landlord had said that me pulling the tub diverter too hard was the reason why the shower runs normally for a minute and then starts coming out from one spout. A plumber finally came yesterday after 5-6 weeks and he said the entire “lower shower valve” needs to be replaced. Landlord is buying a new one and he’ll fix it this weekend. So was she wrong or was I wrong?

My landlord/roommate is someone who I have been having issues with for months. When she told me I have 2 weeks to leave this morning after I pointed out that her claiming I broke the shower valve (which she’s had since 2009) and that I caused the “wall damage” by running sink water. She has yelled at me multiple times and was yelling at me today because I messaged her about this in the morning (I gave her the rent yesterday) saying that to reimburse her for having the shower (which she left broken for over a month) fixed I need a statement for the plumber saying that the cause was me pulling the tub diverter too hard like she’s trying to claim. Because I don’t just trust her judgement like she wants me to. But what was weird to me this morning was her suggestion that I’m “working with the guy I showed her” (the one I was dating, who I was seeing.) That’s not just paranoia. That’s something I always hear from my mother. That’s something I’ve heard from my brother who is schizophrenic. Some people don’t have full blown schizophrenia. But they, as I am observing as I grow older myself and meet more people, still have a certain level of paranoia without the visions and certain other levels of criteria to meet it that is comparable. I actually did come close to dating a guy who is schizophrenic, like a legitimate diagnosis, and I suspected he’d had a psychotic break but still. I don’t know what she actually has, but she obviously sucks and I want to warn people. I can’t decide on whether or not I could be sued for that later though. Someone on social media who saw what I was writing about her actually did recommend that I name her so that others in the city don’t have an experience like mine.