Sleazy & unresponsive landlord, will scam you for as much money as possible.
Pros
You rent the whole house for yourself. Has a backyard
Cons
Renters beware, you are dealing with an AWFUL family of people. They are extremely money driven and will try to scam you any way they can. The property wasn't finished with renovations when we moved in, and this family acknowledged that. There were no curtain rods, some blinds were broken, and the place gets overrun with roaches and ants in the summer because they did a poor job sealing the house. Unfortunately they used our security deposit to fix their mess, and much more. Upon moving out, the landlord asked us to turn electricity back on for them because they wanted to continue renovations, and would later pay us the outstanding balance. We are easygoing people, so we said yes. The landlord and his family then went radio silent regarding our security deposit. After calling them repeatedly, they responded a month later and said we did about $4000 worth of damage, and they would be returning a little over $1k back. We were blindsided and beyond shocked, because we knew we left the place in good condition. Furthermore, the landlord who we paid rent to every month, refused to deal with the situation, and instead repeatedly told us to "speak to [his] daddy" since his father supervised the "repairs" made after we moved out. His father then proceeded to scream at us on the phone, threatened us, and told us to "meet him at the house." We refused. To this day, the landlord has yet to provide us with an itemized list or any receipts of the repairs—only verbal claims that our deposit when towards repainting their house ($2000), power washing the backyard ($600), landscaping ($500), a cleaning lady ($600), miscellaneous cleaning supplies ($200), and other BS costs. After much back and forth over email and seeking legal counsel from an attorney, they returned $3,500 to us. We have a court date scheduled to sue him for the remaining $2,000 and the electricity bill that they promised to pay but never did. They have violated multiple NY State laws, refuse to correspond with our attorney, and even threatened to claw back the $3,500 they returned to us, because he claimed that he gave us that amount as a "courtesy." This wasn't the first time they tried to scam us out of money so we were not surprised by the security deposit dispute. During our tenancy, our family was in the process of buying our first house. We needed a landlord reference letter from him, and so he used the opportunity to blackmail us and said he will not provide a reference unless we paid him $20,000 upfront. We ended up seeking the help of a previous landlord, who wrote a reference for us without hesitation. This rental property is a small mom-and-pop shop so there is no property management that you can dispute this with. This is a horrible, horrible family of people. Please avoid at all costs so you don't have to deal with what we did. PS: even though you have an entire house to yourself, it is not soundproof. We can constantly hear our neighbors speaking and what they're watching on TV.
Advice to the owners
Be a better human
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