fhrugby's Profile

While I agree wholeheartedly on the interior design improvements suggested, the advice is a little off on what the tenants rights are regarding having his floors redone and walls repainted. Here in NYC the landlord is required to repaint the walls and refinish the floors every 3 years, or less is the condition has deteriorated through no fault of the tenant. This refinshing DOES NOT require the tenant to remove all his funiture, the landlord is lying to you as a scare tactic to avoid paying for the required work. Not only do you not have to move all you furniture out, you can have the floor refinisher move the furniture room to room to do the work at the expense of the landlord. Many tenants are elderly or disabled and should not have to pay someone to do this work.

I you do decide to pay for it your self, save the reciepts and send a copy of it to your landlord and request a rent reduction for that amount. I know many tenats so bold as to actually not pay that amount of the rent and just attach the reciept. That is a shortcut as you are supposed to request the rent reduction, but those tenats have been successful as the extra time and effort the landlord would have to go through to force the tenant to submit proper paper work is not worth it as it would just add more cost onto something the landlord will definetly have to pay for.

Lots of free tenants rights groups can help you out with this. The landlord is getting free money in his pocket every time he does not have to provide a service he is required to provide because he bamboozled a tentat into doing for him. Technically this could even be criminal fraud if you could prove he knew that what he said was false.

Every city and community has different laws, but almost all have tenant rights groups to help you, and most are similiar to NYC.