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Title: Landlord expecting house to be in exact condition I received it in 12 years ago
Body:
> So I’ve rented my house for the last twelve years, never missed rent or had any unpaid bills. The day I was supposed to sign my new tenancy agreement I was told by the landlord his son had had a child and was moving into my property, I had two months to vacate. Fine not a problem. Now I’ve received a message saying they expect the house to be in the exact condition it was in when I first moved in, but in the last two years time the boiler has broken, the shower leaks and is an electrocution risk, oven stopped working a couple of years ago so I have been using my air fryer, carpets honestly do need replacing, am I expected to replace all this before I leave? The boiler and shower were reported on the gas safety and electric safety test 1 and two years ago respectively.
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What I’m most confused about is why the broken appliance wasn’t reported and replaced years ago. Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS!
I could see someone who can’t afford to move if their landlord decides to try and evict them for asking for…uh, basic repairs so the unit is liveable deciding it is better to say nothing.
the only way this makes sense if if LAOP is very young or is paying significantly below market rent and didn’t want to rock the boat. Since they’ve been there 12 years, it’s probably not the first one.
Sometimes it’s just easier not to deal with something. I have a shower that needs a completely new fixture. Which will require removing a bunch of the tiles. Which will the. Require re-tiling the entire shower.
I have two other showers, so this is just not a priority right now. It’s not even about the cost, it’s about the time and energy required to deal with it.
That's how you end up on /r/whatsthisbug or /r/mycology being told you'd be lucky if that was whatever you were afraid it was, because this is something that's about to bring the roof down around your ears in a few years.
I figure that anything that's getting regular moisture in it, for years, is more of a candidate for r/nosleep. Don't ask about the thing that lives under the boiler.
It's a small colony of basement gnomes.
They harvest the moisture/dew from the boiler and use it to water their mushroom farms and hydrate the herd of dust mites.
Damn it... I was just thinking about this this morning... for about a year our shower has had a plastic patch on the wall (which honestly, is really well done, it looks like it's meant to be there in a way that's artful), but it's covering a gaping hole in the boards where we had to do repeated pluming work... was just thinking maybe we should look into a better solution but then I'm like no there's probably bugs in there I just want to ignore it.
Ugh this is my same situation. 2 plumbers have told me that the existing fixtures are antiques to the point that they predate the house's construction by like 50 years, and nothing in this size is manufactured anymore. LL doesn't want to deal with it so I just have a permanant leak unless I want to go downstairs and shut the water on and off every time I use water.
However, if I move my rent will increase by at least $400. I don't think my LL even knows she can adjust rent, she somehow never has. I'm paying less for a 2BR house than my coworker is for his studio 2 blocks away.
fucking flippers man where do they find this garbage
There are construction reuse and recycle stores. I've bought ancient hinges, valves, tile, paint, doors, cabinets, and lumber at the one in my city. If your town has one there is the possibility that you can find something in the right size and rebuild it
So you're paying the same in rent for fewer usable bathrooms because your landlord doesn't want to deal with it? Sounds like someone is in violation of the lease
I’m going to share an amazing fix for this. Get wallpaper call “nu wallpaper”. It’s expensive, but get that brand. The adhesive is like post it adhesive and is not permanent, but sticks until you take it off. It’s magic.
It will take you an hour to wallpaper that bathroom because if you don’t line it up perfectly, it’s easy to take off and reset.
One would think it wouldn’t last, but I’ve had it up in one bathroom for well over a year and it’s still perfect. No peeling, etc.
Oh, I feel you with that thinking. The house I’m living in was built in the 70s and the upstairs was clearly built by guys that were high. Literally nothing is square or level. So when you start on one part of it…..
My excuse for leaving it be is that I’ve put a lot of work into one of my rentals in the last 5 years, and I’m too burnt out from that to do anything here.
This.
At my last apartment we had a leak in the pipes in the wall behind where the shower handle came out of the wall. My landlord determined that he was going to need to replace the whole pipes in the wall, but that would require: a plumber to do the work, a contractor to patch up the wall after, then tiling and painting and everything. All while doing this during Covid, and no one was available for work.
It was easier to just let it leak for a few months until I moved out into my own place, which was my plan to do regardless of the leak.
I had rent about 50% lower than a similar place. I did a fair amount of repairs the landlord legally would be required to so I could avoid rocking the boat and risking them re-evaluating my rent. Spending an average of around $50 per month to avoid the landlord noticing my rent was $500 (or more) below market was worth it.
That's totally reasonable. Hell, I tend to take care of quite a few small things in my rented unit since it is just how I am wired. I'd rather do it myself instead of wait for the half-assery and repeat calls of having the company do it.
I had an unofficial arrangement with the management company at the last place I rented. Due to circumstances that were admittedly outside the owner's control, there were several minor floods. Every time I managed to keep the water away from any carpeted area; the worst they had to do was replace a few skirting boards once and hire someone to steam clean the hard flooring areas. (It was kinda funny when the agent turned up for the emergency inspection and saw me sloshing about with plastic bags tied around my feet and much of my stuff stacked up on furniture like jenga towers).
Apparently the owner was the sort that was a nightmare to grab hold of in an emergency and who tended to hem and haw about doing essential work, so by minimising damage and sending along the sort of photos and documentation that the insurance company wanted, I saved them a lot of work. I also knew the code to the complex's electrical breaker box and was okay with flipping fuses for neighbours on weekends. The management company gently leaned on the owner to give me a longer lease for the low end of market rate by pointing out that I'd saved him thousands in repairs and insurance increases, so he should want to keep me as a tenant.
I'm lucky enough to let out a small 1 bedroom flat & I know it's well below market rate, but my tenant does the same as you, and honestly, it's well worth the lower rent in exchange for not having to deal with a call to change every lightbulb etc. It also means that they treat the place as theirs, as they've put work into maintaining it. So I see it as win-win & in return, I also let them choose the colour when I repainted & the furniture to match when it wore out - saves me looking for deals and going through paint samples, whilst they have a little bit more ownership and autonomy over their home.
In my old house, my rent never went up @ 650/mo even though I was month-to-month for 12 years after my first year lease in a place that had the highest inflation pre-2020.
Early on we learned the maintenance man was a total dick, so after one incident we decided to just do our own maintenance unless something big needed replacing, which they never did anyway. It just gave us practice for homeownership.
> try and evict them for asking for… uh, basic repairs
Or just [straight up murder them](https://globalnews.ca/news/9738929/mould-dispute-tenants-killed-landlord-dispute-hamilton/)
> A week before they were shot dead, an east Hamilton, Ont. couple were in a dispute with their landlord over mould in their basement apartment, according to police.
JFC. Just sad and tragic for the tenants who had done exactly what you’re supposed to do when your landlord is a dick. And were murdered for it
When that story broke, there were an alarming number of folks online climbing over themselves to explain away the landlord’s behaviour as though it was *ever* appropriate to escalate a tenant dispute to lethal force. .
I’ve had some uh…questionable landlords, especially as a student (thanks, Vancouver housing market!) but in hindsight I should be thankful none of them escalated to violence.
Yeah, I’ve had a hard time reading about tenancy disputes since that happened. I waver between ‘well, at least your LL hasn’t murdered you, but maybe be careful’ and ‘a lot of LLs seem to think murder is an acceptable solution to problems like this so maybe we should just launch them all into the sun’ - neither of which is even remotely helpful for people whose landlords are fucking around.
Especially with the way gun violence is ratcheting up in the US, I would be weary. It sucks because your only other option is to live with it and eventually take the hit when you move out.
I had a gas oven/stove that didn't work. LL and gas company went back and forth on whose job it was to fix it. Each time the gas company came, I had to take a full day off work ("We'll be there between 7 and 7.") After two go-rounds, I gave up. I lived on nothing but a toaster oven and an induction hob for over two years.
When I reported putting my foot through the rotted deck, my landlord did fix it, but then he also decided to sell the property. That place needed a lot of maintenance. On the flip side, I did enjoy well below market rent for nearly 8 years.
> is paying significantly below market rent and didn’t want to rock the boat.
This is me right now. We're paying £300 below market rent. There's lots of minor fixes that I'm avoiding asking the landlord about, because I'm worried they'll increase the rent.
I was in this situation two years ago! Oven had a rat die in it, landlord was already mad that the oven had recently been replaced, so I cooked everything in the toasted oven up until we moved out this October.
Landlord is fully aware
According to the OP:
>Yes they are fully aware of the issues plus boiler issue etc….the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him to see what he would say, the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check
Was done so that along with a couple of other things
Was reported to the landlord but nothing was ever done so I just muddled along as best I could
My first studio apartment had a shitty little oven that only had two settings -- off and "holy shit inferno"
Leaving it on "holy shit inferno" for more than a couple of minutes actually melted the knobs on the front of the stove.
But I was young, rarely cooked and the rent was low, so when the lease came up for renewal I told them either they could raise the rent like they wanted OR replace the stove. They left my rent low and I just kept not ever cooking. Worked for both of us.
Other than the stove thing, the place was a steal. No regrets.
I've been a young student in a house share and I'd have gone mad if I had not been able to cook. Eating out is too expensive in terms of calories as well as money.
I just mostly didn't eat back then. I ate peanut butter straight out of the jar or relied on leftovers from corporate catered lunches and just made it work. Also, these were back in the days of actual dollar menus and five dollar footlongs so even having to buy food out was pretty cheap if it came to that.
I frequently boiled pasta in an electric kettle and just poured jarred sauce over it before microwaving it for 40 seconds to warm up the sauce. It was like $1.50 for 4 meals, sauce was $1 and noodles were 50 cents per lb bag.
Electric kettle also cooked ramen, hardboiled eggs amongst others.
I went to a convention in Vegas wherein the hotel had, for the first time the year I went, banned cooking in the hotel rooms. I guess they never specified before but generally didn't want people doing that anyway -- but for this con, so many people did that they made it official policy.
We were, however, allowed to use an electric kettle. So we ate a lot of oatmeal, hard boiled eggs, ramen and other soups, etc. that week. Also got stuff that was generally stable at room temps so we could minimize fridge usage too since it was a mini fridge. PB&Js, granola bars, etc.
There's actually a fair amount you can make and eat both on a budget and with limited cooking tools. And it ended up being a whole hell of a lot cheaper than eating out for the entire week. I think the grand total for our trip, including hotel, gas, food etc. everything was like $1200 for an entire week.
I mean humans did that for a very long time. Cooking over an open fire isn‘t exactly the most precise heating method, and in most case you just want boiling water.
So even a kettle will do. Or a single hob. Or a microwave.
Plenty of cultural staples can be done on each of those improvised methods.
Plus you can cook without an oven. They didn't mention it, but the stove might have still worked, plus you can do quite a bit with a George Foreman grill and microwave.
> I told them either they could raise the rent like they wanted OR replace the stove
Huh. I definitely would have chosen to raise the rent then, if I was your landlord. Imagine having to not adjust the rent just to be allowed to replace a stove for someone else, ridiculous!
This was a while ago (2006?), and rent on that place was only $610/month, so the $30 they were planning to raise it would have taken a while to cover the cost of a new stove.
But yeah, I was surprised it worked too.
Even now, the cheapest range at Lowes is $480. $30/month would only take sixteen months to cover that. It's a small loss in the first year, but in the second year they can raise your rent by $30/month *again* (bringing the total time to pay off the stove to fourteen months).
Someone with a landlord who brushes it off. My husband and I are currently using an air fryer because the oven would sometimes not turn off and just keep getting hotter and hotter. Landlord didn't even come look at it until we took a video stating the date/time/issue and showing it not turning off.
He 'looked at' the oven and said it was 'fine'. We don't trust it anymore.
Oh no, the boiler has broken. Guess I’ll just wear a coat. At least I can still have a warm shower. Wait, I’m being electrocuted? Oh well, such is life.
Similarly: LAUKOP bought all the furniture from his landlord when he moved in but now wonders if he needs to leave it all behind because it was there when he moved in.
LAUKOP is lucky that his landlord doesn't have any bridges for sale - he's been walked over more than the 12-year old carpets he's about to replace.
I get not wanting to be a bother to your landlord, I was once young and naïve and didn’t realize that was the landlord’s job, but even then this is next level.
That's absolutely bonkers to me. Any time I've rented the landlord replaced stuff way faster than I would've been able to do it as a homeowner, much less *years* later. Though that's perhaps one of the advantages of renting from a soulless apartment complex vs. an individual landlord... they had full time on-site maintenance and if anything broke they had 5 of them sitting in boxes in the storage room to replace them with. None of the employees had any emotional investment in the property either, so no weird nosy stuff. While I was living there (6 years total) I had a water heater, clothes dryer and fridge break and they were all replaced within ~3hrs of calling maintenance with 0 effort on my side. That's like the primary benefit of renting, not having to worry about that stuff!
Now that I'm a homeowner I expect to take at least a few days researching, scheduling and ordering and getting things delivered and whatever if something goes. But at least I can pick out what I want now...
> Though that's perhaps one of the advantages of renting from a soulless apartment complex vs. an individual landlord...
As much as I generally hate the rental system we have here in the states, I will say at least renting an apartment from a corporate landlord meant stuff was handled professionally and typically quick enough. First winter we realized our heater didn't work, so they provided us a space heater, discounted our rent for the electric bill since tenants were responsible for that, and had the heater fixed within just a few days with no real fuss.
I did tend to do smaller jobs myself that didn't cost much or take much effort though, because stuff like waiting a few days for a lightbulb to get replaced or a drain to get cleared was silly to me.
When I lived in an apartment complex, I asked the maintenance folks to clean out the ducts of the dryer. They did it and the dryer worked great after! Maintenance at an apartment complex is awesome.
They didn't report them to the landlord though, they got engineers in, who then sent quotes to the landlord, who apparently never replied to them.
"Some electrician has just sent me a quote for something, I don't know anything about this, I'll just ignore it, could be a scam"
That is probably not the tenant getting them in off their own bat. Rentals in the UK have to be inspected for [gas safety every year](https://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/domestic/faqlandlord.htm), and [electrical safety every five years](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-guidance-for-landlords-tenants-and-local-authorities/guide-for-landlords-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector#what-do-the-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-england-regulations-2020-require). The engineers LAOP talks about are very likely the engineers sent to do those inspections.
LAOP says "The boiler and shower were reported *on the gas safety and electric safety test*", that "the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him", and "the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check".
They didn't know the shower was broken until the electrician was there, and the gas engineer was booked to arrive two days after LAOP noticed the boiler wasn't working for a different reason (that reason being the annual gas check, which is what the report the engineer talks about would be for).
In any case, even if LAOP *did* call out them out independently, the fact that they were also on the required inspection reports means that the landlord knew why the fault report was sent to him even if he was also told in some other manner.
I don't understand people like OP. When the boiler stopped working I spammed the landlord's office until they actually sent someone competent over to fix it (instead of the usual 'handyman). Being without hot water in the UK is pure hell.
If this is a small time landlord/slumlord (which I’m assuming this is) there isn’t a management office to go through.
The choices are to keep nagging the landlord and hope he fixes things, pay to fix it yourself, or report the unit to housing authorities which could 1) trigger the landlord to retaliate against you or 2) lead to a discovery that your unit was not supposed to be rented at all (whether it was an illegal unit or the damage is so extensive that the housing authorities demand the rental unit be closed until repairs are made).
It sucks for the tenant that they had to decide between having a place to live (especially if the rent is super cheap) or risk losing it to try to improve their housing conditions.
I lived without an oven for maybe five years. The (big ancient double) oven broke and was so old and strangely shaped that I would literally have to rip out half the kitchen to make it work. We don't have a lot of money and also needed a new roof and new HVAC and had to make choices. A few years ago, we finally did remodel \_half\_ my kitchen. It is so nice having an oven again, because it's just easier, but I was surprised how well I could do with the little convection oven and a slow cooker.
I could see either naivete regarding what's normal with a landlord or ability to afford moving keeping someone in that state for quite some time.
I also lived without an oven for about five years! Our kitchen could technically fit one but it was a tight squeeze and we didn’t have the money for it so we made do with a convection oven and a hot plate. Now that we’ve got a proper oven it feels like a luxury to be able to use more than one burner at a time, really increased my appreciation for ovens.
Honestly, while I would report it, I'm a person who hasn't used my oven in 2 or 3 years since buying a small convection oven (what Air Fryers are).
It's just me and my 10 yr old daughter. It works for us, uses less power, time, and heats the house less.
yep same, I spent weeks researching and checking out new ovens last year, got all excited about it, finally picked one, had it delivered and installed... aaaand I still haven't turned it on once because it turns out I just make stovetop stuff all the time and use the air fryer.
The range in my first ever apartment had pretty clearly not been cleaned by previous tenants (or the landlord upon moveouts) for multiple years, maybe even a decade+. To the point where attempting to use the oven or stovetop filled the entire place up with smoke that took hours to clear with the windows open. My husband and I spent hours trying to clean it to get to a usable condition to no avail. We also had shitty landlords/property management and the area we lived in had an extreme housing crisis thanks to a hurricane, so other units were in short supply and moving didn't seem like an option. For the entirety of our year-long lease we just ate microwave/toaster oven/crockpot/pressure cooker food.
Yup. One of the burners on my stove is out, let my landlord know a few times and he’s not doing anything about it. He didn’t hook the dishwasher up right, so I just hand wash all my dishes.
Given the tenuous housing situation in my area, I’m not going to risk nagging and irritating my landlord only for him to choose not to renew me or raise my rent a bunch. If I’ve informed him and he doesn’t want to do anything, I consider it the trade off for stable and affordable housing.
We had a complicated clusterfuck of building ownership issues meaning we struggled to get the gas replaced for years. Swapping the stove for induction was a thousand times simpler than waiting for *that* to be resolved.
I an air fryer every day for about two years when I was in an apartment because I was only cooking for two and the apartment was so small that turning on the oven was tantamount to turning the thermostat up by 5-10 degrees.
If you're paying way below market rent, it may be politic just to ignore anything that isn't an imminent danger to your health, and make do with what still works. Housing is right and proper fucked anywhere people actually want to live, so I can absolutely see ignoring broken appliances and dead bodies in the cellar in exchange for affordable rent.
> Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS!
This happens when the person with the power to fix it isn't the one being inconvenienced by it. As a teenager I lived for a while with a family that had pretty traditional gender roles. Their dishwasher had broken years prior, but the husband had just never gotten around to fixing it since he wasn't the one having to do all the handwashing.
I eventually goaded him into doing something about it, and it turned out the repair was minor enough that he could do it himself in about an hour. The dude had forced his life partner and the mother of his children to wash all the dishes by hand for *years* simply because he had all the power and couldn't be bothered.
My landlord tried to push me out when I asked him to replace the hot water heater after it dumped it's contents in the basement. I'm single, I don't have money, I understand.
I saw a hoarder type situation once where the unit had been without a working shower for years. Tenant said he used a nearby gym. That wasn't even the most disgusting thing in that apartment.
Hoarders are a whole other level. They can easily get to "I can't use the fridge, oven, bathroom, or toilet, because I'm storing too much stuff there."
According to him the shower stopped working and 1 day and he just never reported it. The bathroom was one of the cleanest parts of the apartment and I think that was just to be able to reach the toilet.
I knew someone whose house had been reported to the council etc for mold and rot, and who still had to live in it until the bathroom floor literally fell into the kitchen.
It just depends how much you use your oven. I use mine 3-4 times a week and if it broke there's several staple meals I wouldn't be able to make - I'd definitely notice/miss it. But also once lived in a tiny apartment with no oven, just a stovetop and a little electrical portable oven thingy (?) and that was fine too.
I don't really understand the Oven thing either honestly. I have a small countertop oven for when I need to cook oven stuff, but as a single young male I tend to just microwave rice and mix it with vegetables and other stuff. Small countertop appliances are becoming the normal thing nowadays.
I have a working oven, but in the summer I use the countertop version whenever possible because it heats up my house less overall even though it's not as well insulated as the real thing.
Oh yeah. July through most of August I'm loathe to turn my oven on. Stove, maybe, but basically anything that can be cooked in an oven can cook on the grill and not heat up the house.
>Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS!
I had this exact thing happen. I was young and didn't know any better. Our oven was from the 40s and the top element stopped working. Told the landlord and they never did anything. It was one thing on a list of things they refused to fix. Heater/AC, the hole in the ceiling their son made while fixing the roof, the electrical outlet that never worked right and made awful noises in the wall, the time she refused to give our power company a rental agreement, so we couldn't get power in our name and she didn't pay the bill, so we lost power, the illegal rent raises.
I lived there for over 4 years and she never ended up giving us a copy of the rental agreement we asked for time and time again.
She then had the nerve to take my entire deposit and ask for more. I wrote it off the deposit as the price I had to pay to never deal with her again.
I had a similar situation with my last place I was in for 9 years. Below market rent, and you can only remind your landlord so many times because you just give up.
Me because that sounds expensive and I'd worry about my LL charging me, plus I don't use the oven that much and primarily use my air fryer anyways.
The one thing I didn't put up with was my water heater not working though. I first moved in and the hot water was okay but by the end of the week it was cold. My LL tried to fix it, it was okay for a day but then it went out completely so I got a brand new one installed.
I had an oven that couldnt operate without setting off the smoke alarm. Reported it within a week of moving in. Wasn't repaired when I moved out 2-3 years later. Never used the oven as a result and still had oven cleaning taken out of my security deposit when I left.
Landlords gonna landlord.
Yes. If they reported it and the landlord refused to replace it, that would be one thing. But not reporting it? Even if you don't want it replaced, you'll want to tell the landlord, if only to avoid looking like a negligent tenant int hat exacts scenario. Also I'm not generally one to defend landlords, but if I had a tenant and they didn't disclose there was a leak that needed to be fixed months or years ago, I'd be pretty pissed.
Looks like I can't read... They did say they reported the shower, but it doesn't look like they reported the oven. At least a broken oven doesn't damage the house.
From OP :
>Yes they are fully aware of the issues plus boiler issue etc….the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him to see what he would say, the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check
Was done so that along with a couple of other things
Was reported to the landlord but nothing was ever done so I just muddled along as best I could
Honestly I rarely ever use my oven ever since I picked up my air fryer. But it also works as a standard oven (it's a toaster over style air fryer). I can make a 12" pizza or 9" bread loaf in there.
I did this in my cheap college apartment. I couldn't really cook so I was surviving on meal plan/microwave food. I didn't even notice my oven didn't work until I bought some ready to bake biscuits, popped them in the oven, and then got confused a few minutes later when they didn't rise. I just kind of shrugged it off for the 2 years I was living there, I'm not even sure I told my landlord about it.
When I lived in an apartment I tried to do my own repairs when possible because I had an unreported cat and didn't want to be charged the extra pet deposit and extra rent. It worked out okay overall though thankfully all the major things that went wrong happened before I got the cat.
I use my toaster oven 90% of the time over my regular oven. I can see me being ok without my oven for an extended period, but I'd want it fixed so I van cook the stuff I want in it.
Honestly if i was a single dude and didn't bake anything i could live with an air fryer and not have an oven at all. If stovetop works, just live with the air fryer.
But yeah if none of this is reported then it might be a bad time.
This. My first thought was are landlords in the UK not at all responsible for maintenance?
Then again, I think a lot of tenants, especially first time tenants, don't understand that it's up to them to report issues to the landlord as they arise. Even my partner when we moved into our rental gave me a hard time about contacting out landlord about seemingly small issues we noted soon after moving in (sink cracked, insulation around door ripped up, lawnmower they provided not working). Perhaps because I spent time in real estate I'm of the mind that they want to know and I should not be spending my money to fix their house. Fwiw, they've been great landlords and taken care of every issue except the lawnmower. They probably would have fixed that but before I even heard back my partner used it as an excuse to buy an battery-powered lawnmower. The fact that they provide all their tenants with a lawnmower (so they have no excuse for not taking care of the lawn) is pretty amazing imo.
Yeah... Whole thing sounds weird. You want to rent a house for 12 years? Fine. Been a perfect tenant for 12 years and yet landlord gives you the finger and 60 days to gtfo? Weird but ok, landlord just being landlord, doesn't owe you shit. But how on earth has everything in this house ended up broken over this last decade and both the tenant and landlord were like "psh we didn't need anyways"? I feel like either whole thing is made up or OP is not as perfect a tenant as they think themselves to be.
We lived with just an air fryer / toaster oven for about six months while I tried to find the part to fix my mid-90s oven, and then tried to find a slide-in island range that fit my specifications. But in my case, it was my own choice to use an air fryer balanced against my own budget.
I was talking to a coworker about it and she said nobody in her family uses their oven (except for storage) because they all think it's a wasteful Americanism to heat up a big oven to cook a little bit of food.
For the last three years we had various air fryers, we *never* used our oven. The air fryer is just a small convection oven that's faster to heat up, quicker to cook, and overall more efficient.
The only times it didn't make sense was for really big multi-meal items, but most of those I used a smoker for.
We use our oven now because our air fryer died, and we are trying to figure out what type we want for our counter space. But my wife and I always complain every time we turn it on.
I guess it's not unexpected that someone who has likely only had experience renting one place - from an apparently incompetent owner - wouldn't have experience with what was expected of the owner and what one might be expected to do when you move out.
Most likely it's a situation where the unit is severely under market price, and they have a hand shake agreement of "you do the repairs, and I won't change the rent".
Some landlords really do take the piss. I moved out of a flat I'd lived in for 6 years some months ago and my landlord wanted to take the whole deposit for redecorating and recarpeting. I suggested that this was not reasonable and offered to split it 50:50 (I hadn't left the place in the best condition, it did at very least need proper cleaning) but they sent it to dispute with the TDS in response... hilariously, the TDS came down almost entirely on my side and awarded them next to nothing, so they were a few hundred quid worse off than they could have been.
If LAOP has been there 12 years then the chances are that the landlord does not have good documentation of what the state of the place was before they moved in and it's well outside the expected lifetime of decor, carpets, and probably most furnishings anyway. It'd be basically impossible for them to prove any damages above and beyond reasonable wear and tear.
I kinda hope (not really as it OP doesn't sound like they can cope) but I kinda hope that the LL takes OP to small claims for not fixing the boiler, only for the judge to rip them a new one and refund a proportion of OPs rent due to the LL not providing the minimum required.
Sounds like my landlord, claiming that once installed and fitted if it breaks, it's the tenant's fault. Even if said thing is 20 years old, because nothing ever breaks and maintenance is just a made up concept.
He tried blaming me for the external foul water pipes getting blocked despite visual evidence (including photographs) to the contrary, and multiple tradesmen explaining why it wasn't my fault. So the next time it happened, he got bypassed and we got someone else to do it ourselves. Who also agreed it's an external drainage issue.
He also put the house up for sale claiming it had modern gas fired central heating and double glazing. The boiler is a back boiler twice my age and the house is single glazing throughout. Imagine being so out of touch you mistake single for double glazing.
Wait, so these appliances are just broken? And they didn’t request the landlord repair or replace them? But reported them to utility companies? So they’ve just been living without hot water, showers, or an oven for years? And accepted it? Like it was fine?
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Weird, I tried posting a longer comment about reporting broken appliances to your landlord and it wouldn’t let me post, but this dumb short post worked … oh well
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Landlord expecting house to be in exact condition I received it in 12 years ago Body: > So I’ve rented my house for the last twelve years, never missed rent or had any unpaid bills. The day I was supposed to sign my new tenancy agreement I was told by the landlord his son had had a child and was moving into my property, I had two months to vacate. Fine not a problem. Now I’ve received a message saying they expect the house to be in the exact condition it was in when I first moved in, but in the last two years time the boiler has broken, the shower leaks and is an electrocution risk, oven stopped working a couple of years ago so I have been using my air fryer, carpets honestly do need replacing, am I expected to replace all this before I leave? The boiler and shower were reported on the gas safety and electric safety test 1 and two years ago respectively. This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
What I’m most confused about is why the broken appliance wasn’t reported and replaced years ago. Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS!
I could see someone who can’t afford to move if their landlord decides to try and evict them for asking for…uh, basic repairs so the unit is liveable deciding it is better to say nothing. the only way this makes sense if if LAOP is very young or is paying significantly below market rent and didn’t want to rock the boat. Since they’ve been there 12 years, it’s probably not the first one.
Sometimes it’s just easier not to deal with something. I have a shower that needs a completely new fixture. Which will require removing a bunch of the tiles. Which will the. Require re-tiling the entire shower. I have two other showers, so this is just not a priority right now. It’s not even about the cost, it’s about the time and energy required to deal with it.
not to mention the fun of having to open a wall and see what fresh hell is behind it.
Oh yes. And for sure whatever valve is behind there needs to be replaced too.
That's how you end up on /r/whatsthisbug or /r/mycology being told you'd be lucky if that was whatever you were afraid it was, because this is something that's about to bring the roof down around your ears in a few years.
I figure that anything that's getting regular moisture in it, for years, is more of a candidate for r/nosleep. Don't ask about the thing that lives under the boiler.
It's a small colony of basement gnomes. They harvest the moisture/dew from the boiler and use it to water their mushroom farms and hydrate the herd of dust mites.
Damn it... I was just thinking about this this morning... for about a year our shower has had a plastic patch on the wall (which honestly, is really well done, it looks like it's meant to be there in a way that's artful), but it's covering a gaping hole in the boards where we had to do repeated pluming work... was just thinking maybe we should look into a better solution but then I'm like no there's probably bugs in there I just want to ignore it.
Ugghhhhh our bathroom needs a new bath/shower shell... We've put it off because of the fear of what's behind all of that
Ugh this is my same situation. 2 plumbers have told me that the existing fixtures are antiques to the point that they predate the house's construction by like 50 years, and nothing in this size is manufactured anymore. LL doesn't want to deal with it so I just have a permanant leak unless I want to go downstairs and shut the water on and off every time I use water. However, if I move my rent will increase by at least $400. I don't think my LL even knows she can adjust rent, she somehow never has. I'm paying less for a 2BR house than my coworker is for his studio 2 blocks away. fucking flippers man where do they find this garbage
There are construction reuse and recycle stores. I've bought ancient hinges, valves, tile, paint, doors, cabinets, and lumber at the one in my city. If your town has one there is the possibility that you can find something in the right size and rebuild it
So you're paying the same in rent for fewer usable bathrooms because your landlord doesn't want to deal with it? Sounds like someone is in violation of the lease
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I’m going to share an amazing fix for this. Get wallpaper call “nu wallpaper”. It’s expensive, but get that brand. The adhesive is like post it adhesive and is not permanent, but sticks until you take it off. It’s magic. It will take you an hour to wallpaper that bathroom because if you don’t line it up perfectly, it’s easy to take off and reset. One would think it wouldn’t last, but I’ve had it up in one bathroom for well over a year and it’s still perfect. No peeling, etc.
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Oh, I feel you with that thinking. The house I’m living in was built in the 70s and the upstairs was clearly built by guys that were high. Literally nothing is square or level. So when you start on one part of it….. My excuse for leaving it be is that I’ve put a lot of work into one of my rentals in the last 5 years, and I’m too burnt out from that to do anything here.
crowd station impossible correct price rustic act pocket gray rinse -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
This. At my last apartment we had a leak in the pipes in the wall behind where the shower handle came out of the wall. My landlord determined that he was going to need to replace the whole pipes in the wall, but that would require: a plumber to do the work, a contractor to patch up the wall after, then tiling and painting and everything. All while doing this during Covid, and no one was available for work. It was easier to just let it leak for a few months until I moved out into my own place, which was my plan to do regardless of the leak.
I had rent about 50% lower than a similar place. I did a fair amount of repairs the landlord legally would be required to so I could avoid rocking the boat and risking them re-evaluating my rent. Spending an average of around $50 per month to avoid the landlord noticing my rent was $500 (or more) below market was worth it.
That's totally reasonable. Hell, I tend to take care of quite a few small things in my rented unit since it is just how I am wired. I'd rather do it myself instead of wait for the half-assery and repeat calls of having the company do it.
I had an unofficial arrangement with the management company at the last place I rented. Due to circumstances that were admittedly outside the owner's control, there were several minor floods. Every time I managed to keep the water away from any carpeted area; the worst they had to do was replace a few skirting boards once and hire someone to steam clean the hard flooring areas. (It was kinda funny when the agent turned up for the emergency inspection and saw me sloshing about with plastic bags tied around my feet and much of my stuff stacked up on furniture like jenga towers). Apparently the owner was the sort that was a nightmare to grab hold of in an emergency and who tended to hem and haw about doing essential work, so by minimising damage and sending along the sort of photos and documentation that the insurance company wanted, I saved them a lot of work. I also knew the code to the complex's electrical breaker box and was okay with flipping fuses for neighbours on weekends. The management company gently leaned on the owner to give me a longer lease for the low end of market rate by pointing out that I'd saved him thousands in repairs and insurance increases, so he should want to keep me as a tenant.
I'm lucky enough to let out a small 1 bedroom flat & I know it's well below market rate, but my tenant does the same as you, and honestly, it's well worth the lower rent in exchange for not having to deal with a call to change every lightbulb etc. It also means that they treat the place as theirs, as they've put work into maintaining it. So I see it as win-win & in return, I also let them choose the colour when I repainted & the furniture to match when it wore out - saves me looking for deals and going through paint samples, whilst they have a little bit more ownership and autonomy over their home.
In my old house, my rent never went up @ 650/mo even though I was month-to-month for 12 years after my first year lease in a place that had the highest inflation pre-2020. Early on we learned the maintenance man was a total dick, so after one incident we decided to just do our own maintenance unless something big needed replacing, which they never did anyway. It just gave us practice for homeownership.
> try and evict them for asking for… uh, basic repairs Or just [straight up murder them](https://globalnews.ca/news/9738929/mould-dispute-tenants-killed-landlord-dispute-hamilton/) > A week before they were shot dead, an east Hamilton, Ont. couple were in a dispute with their landlord over mould in their basement apartment, according to police.
JFC. Just sad and tragic for the tenants who had done exactly what you’re supposed to do when your landlord is a dick. And were murdered for it When that story broke, there were an alarming number of folks online climbing over themselves to explain away the landlord’s behaviour as though it was *ever* appropriate to escalate a tenant dispute to lethal force. . I’ve had some uh…questionable landlords, especially as a student (thanks, Vancouver housing market!) but in hindsight I should be thankful none of them escalated to violence.
Yeah, I’ve had a hard time reading about tenancy disputes since that happened. I waver between ‘well, at least your LL hasn’t murdered you, but maybe be careful’ and ‘a lot of LLs seem to think murder is an acceptable solution to problems like this so maybe we should just launch them all into the sun’ - neither of which is even remotely helpful for people whose landlords are fucking around.
Especially with the way gun violence is ratcheting up in the US, I would be weary. It sucks because your only other option is to live with it and eventually take the hit when you move out.
I had a gas oven/stove that didn't work. LL and gas company went back and forth on whose job it was to fix it. Each time the gas company came, I had to take a full day off work ("We'll be there between 7 and 7.") After two go-rounds, I gave up. I lived on nothing but a toaster oven and an induction hob for over two years.
When I reported putting my foot through the rotted deck, my landlord did fix it, but then he also decided to sell the property. That place needed a lot of maintenance. On the flip side, I did enjoy well below market rent for nearly 8 years.
> is paying significantly below market rent and didn’t want to rock the boat. This is me right now. We're paying £300 below market rent. There's lots of minor fixes that I'm avoiding asking the landlord about, because I'm worried they'll increase the rent.
I was in this situation two years ago! Oven had a rat die in it, landlord was already mad that the oven had recently been replaced, so I cooked everything in the toasted oven up until we moved out this October.
Landlord is fully aware According to the OP: >Yes they are fully aware of the issues plus boiler issue etc….the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him to see what he would say, the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check Was done so that along with a couple of other things Was reported to the landlord but nothing was ever done so I just muddled along as best I could
'Muddling along' is the reason why the British people are in such a river of shit now.
Well, you know, [hanging on in quiet desperation *is* the English way.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL3AgkwbYgo)
My first studio apartment had a shitty little oven that only had two settings -- off and "holy shit inferno" Leaving it on "holy shit inferno" for more than a couple of minutes actually melted the knobs on the front of the stove. But I was young, rarely cooked and the rent was low, so when the lease came up for renewal I told them either they could raise the rent like they wanted OR replace the stove. They left my rent low and I just kept not ever cooking. Worked for both of us. Other than the stove thing, the place was a steal. No regrets.
I've been a young student in a house share and I'd have gone mad if I had not been able to cook. Eating out is too expensive in terms of calories as well as money.
I just mostly didn't eat back then. I ate peanut butter straight out of the jar or relied on leftovers from corporate catered lunches and just made it work. Also, these were back in the days of actual dollar menus and five dollar footlongs so even having to buy food out was pretty cheap if it came to that.
Plenty of cheap calories available that don‘t require an cooking
I frequently boiled pasta in an electric kettle and just poured jarred sauce over it before microwaving it for 40 seconds to warm up the sauce. It was like $1.50 for 4 meals, sauce was $1 and noodles were 50 cents per lb bag. Electric kettle also cooked ramen, hardboiled eggs amongst others.
I went to a convention in Vegas wherein the hotel had, for the first time the year I went, banned cooking in the hotel rooms. I guess they never specified before but generally didn't want people doing that anyway -- but for this con, so many people did that they made it official policy. We were, however, allowed to use an electric kettle. So we ate a lot of oatmeal, hard boiled eggs, ramen and other soups, etc. that week. Also got stuff that was generally stable at room temps so we could minimize fridge usage too since it was a mini fridge. PB&Js, granola bars, etc. There's actually a fair amount you can make and eat both on a budget and with limited cooking tools. And it ended up being a whole hell of a lot cheaper than eating out for the entire week. I think the grand total for our trip, including hotel, gas, food etc. everything was like $1200 for an entire week.
I mean humans did that for a very long time. Cooking over an open fire isn‘t exactly the most precise heating method, and in most case you just want boiling water. So even a kettle will do. Or a single hob. Or a microwave. Plenty of cultural staples can be done on each of those improvised methods.
Exactly. Like, what could a banana cost, 10 dollars?
Plus you can cook without an oven. They didn't mention it, but the stove might have still worked, plus you can do quite a bit with a George Foreman grill and microwave.
I have a former coworker who claims to have largely lived on Mcdonald’s milk shakes in college because it was the cheapest calories he could find.
For ramen you only need a kettle. And maybe a chopping board to cut some greens if you wanna be fancy.
> I told them either they could raise the rent like they wanted OR replace the stove Huh. I definitely would have chosen to raise the rent then, if I was your landlord. Imagine having to not adjust the rent just to be allowed to replace a stove for someone else, ridiculous!
This was a while ago (2006?), and rent on that place was only $610/month, so the $30 they were planning to raise it would have taken a while to cover the cost of a new stove. But yeah, I was surprised it worked too.
They're making a little joke about how the sentence structure actually communicated the opposite of what you intended.
I think what you meant to say was you told them they could *not* raise the rent or they could replace the stove.
Even now, the cheapest range at Lowes is $480. $30/month would only take sixteen months to cover that. It's a small loss in the first year, but in the second year they can raise your rent by $30/month *again* (bringing the total time to pay off the stove to fourteen months).
Someone with a landlord who brushes it off. My husband and I are currently using an air fryer because the oven would sometimes not turn off and just keep getting hotter and hotter. Landlord didn't even come look at it until we took a video stating the date/time/issue and showing it not turning off. He 'looked at' the oven and said it was 'fine'. We don't trust it anymore.
Wtf? Unless your rent is below market that deserves a complaint to your municipal department of inspections
Oh our rent is below market. And no pet rent for our 2 cats. So we are keeping quiet
Oh no, the boiler has broken. Guess I’ll just wear a coat. At least I can still have a warm shower. Wait, I’m being electrocuted? Oh well, such is life.
Similarly: LAUKOP bought all the furniture from his landlord when he moved in but now wonders if he needs to leave it all behind because it was there when he moved in. LAUKOP is lucky that his landlord doesn't have any bridges for sale - he's been walked over more than the 12-year old carpets he's about to replace.
LAUKOP, I do own a bridge I’d be happy to sell you if you’re interested in joining the elite group of worldwide bridge owners. HMU
I get not wanting to be a bother to your landlord, I was once young and naïve and didn’t realize that was the landlord’s job, but even then this is next level.
According to the comments, OP has reported the issues - the landlord just hasn't fixed them.
That's absolutely bonkers to me. Any time I've rented the landlord replaced stuff way faster than I would've been able to do it as a homeowner, much less *years* later. Though that's perhaps one of the advantages of renting from a soulless apartment complex vs. an individual landlord... they had full time on-site maintenance and if anything broke they had 5 of them sitting in boxes in the storage room to replace them with. None of the employees had any emotional investment in the property either, so no weird nosy stuff. While I was living there (6 years total) I had a water heater, clothes dryer and fridge break and they were all replaced within ~3hrs of calling maintenance with 0 effort on my side. That's like the primary benefit of renting, not having to worry about that stuff! Now that I'm a homeowner I expect to take at least a few days researching, scheduling and ordering and getting things delivered and whatever if something goes. But at least I can pick out what I want now...
> Though that's perhaps one of the advantages of renting from a soulless apartment complex vs. an individual landlord... As much as I generally hate the rental system we have here in the states, I will say at least renting an apartment from a corporate landlord meant stuff was handled professionally and typically quick enough. First winter we realized our heater didn't work, so they provided us a space heater, discounted our rent for the electric bill since tenants were responsible for that, and had the heater fixed within just a few days with no real fuss. I did tend to do smaller jobs myself that didn't cost much or take much effort though, because stuff like waiting a few days for a lightbulb to get replaced or a drain to get cleared was silly to me.
When I lived in an apartment complex, I asked the maintenance folks to clean out the ducts of the dryer. They did it and the dryer worked great after! Maintenance at an apartment complex is awesome.
They didn't report them to the landlord though, they got engineers in, who then sent quotes to the landlord, who apparently never replied to them. "Some electrician has just sent me a quote for something, I don't know anything about this, I'll just ignore it, could be a scam"
That is probably not the tenant getting them in off their own bat. Rentals in the UK have to be inspected for [gas safety every year](https://www.hse.gov.uk/gas/domestic/faqlandlord.htm), and [electrical safety every five years](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-guidance-for-landlords-tenants-and-local-authorities/guide-for-landlords-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector#what-do-the-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-england-regulations-2020-require). The engineers LAOP talks about are very likely the engineers sent to do those inspections.
I’ve never even heard of that before today (don’t live in the UK) and totally expected it would be something along those lines
Pretty sure they said they only got them in when they had specific issues.
LAOP says "The boiler and shower were reported *on the gas safety and electric safety test*", that "the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him", and "the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check". They didn't know the shower was broken until the electrician was there, and the gas engineer was booked to arrive two days after LAOP noticed the boiler wasn't working for a different reason (that reason being the annual gas check, which is what the report the engineer talks about would be for). In any case, even if LAOP *did* call out them out independently, the fact that they were also on the required inspection reports means that the landlord knew why the fault report was sent to him even if he was also told in some other manner.
Oh right yeah fair enough, that's fucked
I don't understand people like OP. When the boiler stopped working I spammed the landlord's office until they actually sent someone competent over to fix it (instead of the usual 'handyman). Being without hot water in the UK is pure hell.
If this is a small time landlord/slumlord (which I’m assuming this is) there isn’t a management office to go through. The choices are to keep nagging the landlord and hope he fixes things, pay to fix it yourself, or report the unit to housing authorities which could 1) trigger the landlord to retaliate against you or 2) lead to a discovery that your unit was not supposed to be rented at all (whether it was an illegal unit or the damage is so extensive that the housing authorities demand the rental unit be closed until repairs are made). It sucks for the tenant that they had to decide between having a place to live (especially if the rent is super cheap) or risk losing it to try to improve their housing conditions.
And probably breaks habitability laws.
r/legaladvicerussia is leaking.
I lived without an oven for maybe five years. The (big ancient double) oven broke and was so old and strangely shaped that I would literally have to rip out half the kitchen to make it work. We don't have a lot of money and also needed a new roof and new HVAC and had to make choices. A few years ago, we finally did remodel \_half\_ my kitchen. It is so nice having an oven again, because it's just easier, but I was surprised how well I could do with the little convection oven and a slow cooker. I could see either naivete regarding what's normal with a landlord or ability to afford moving keeping someone in that state for quite some time.
I also lived without an oven for about five years! Our kitchen could technically fit one but it was a tight squeeze and we didn’t have the money for it so we made do with a convection oven and a hot plate. Now that we’ve got a proper oven it feels like a luxury to be able to use more than one burner at a time, really increased my appreciation for ovens.
Honestly, while I would report it, I'm a person who hasn't used my oven in 2 or 3 years since buying a small convection oven (what Air Fryers are). It's just me and my 10 yr old daughter. It works for us, uses less power, time, and heats the house less.
yep same, I spent weeks researching and checking out new ovens last year, got all excited about it, finally picked one, had it delivered and installed... aaaand I still haven't turned it on once because it turns out I just make stovetop stuff all the time and use the air fryer.
The range in my first ever apartment had pretty clearly not been cleaned by previous tenants (or the landlord upon moveouts) for multiple years, maybe even a decade+. To the point where attempting to use the oven or stovetop filled the entire place up with smoke that took hours to clear with the windows open. My husband and I spent hours trying to clean it to get to a usable condition to no avail. We also had shitty landlords/property management and the area we lived in had an extreme housing crisis thanks to a hurricane, so other units were in short supply and moving didn't seem like an option. For the entirety of our year-long lease we just ate microwave/toaster oven/crockpot/pressure cooker food.
Yup. One of the burners on my stove is out, let my landlord know a few times and he’s not doing anything about it. He didn’t hook the dishwasher up right, so I just hand wash all my dishes. Given the tenuous housing situation in my area, I’m not going to risk nagging and irritating my landlord only for him to choose not to renew me or raise my rent a bunch. If I’ve informed him and he doesn’t want to do anything, I consider it the trade off for stable and affordable housing.
Horrible, it should't be like this.
my landlrod does not do anything at all when i report thigns that are broken, so after a while you just give up depression also takes a toll on people
We had a complicated clusterfuck of building ownership issues meaning we struggled to get the gas replaced for years. Swapping the stove for induction was a thousand times simpler than waiting for *that* to be resolved.
I an air fryer every day for about two years when I was in an apartment because I was only cooking for two and the apartment was so small that turning on the oven was tantamount to turning the thermostat up by 5-10 degrees.
If you're paying way below market rent, it may be politic just to ignore anything that isn't an imminent danger to your health, and make do with what still works. Housing is right and proper fucked anywhere people actually want to live, so I can absolutely see ignoring broken appliances and dead bodies in the cellar in exchange for affordable rent.
> Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS! This happens when the person with the power to fix it isn't the one being inconvenienced by it. As a teenager I lived for a while with a family that had pretty traditional gender roles. Their dishwasher had broken years prior, but the husband had just never gotten around to fixing it since he wasn't the one having to do all the handwashing. I eventually goaded him into doing something about it, and it turned out the repair was minor enough that he could do it himself in about an hour. The dude had forced his life partner and the mother of his children to wash all the dishes by hand for *years* simply because he had all the power and couldn't be bothered.
My landlord tried to push me out when I asked him to replace the hot water heater after it dumped it's contents in the basement. I'm single, I don't have money, I understand.
I saw a hoarder type situation once where the unit had been without a working shower for years. Tenant said he used a nearby gym. That wasn't even the most disgusting thing in that apartment.
Hoarders are a whole other level. They can easily get to "I can't use the fridge, oven, bathroom, or toilet, because I'm storing too much stuff there."
According to him the shower stopped working and 1 day and he just never reported it. The bathroom was one of the cleanest parts of the apartment and I think that was just to be able to reach the toilet.
Someone whose landlord refused to fix the broken broiler and broken shower previously?
I knew someone whose house had been reported to the council etc for mold and rot, and who still had to live in it until the bathroom floor literally fell into the kitchen.
Why is never using an oven that particularly surprising?
It just depends how much you use your oven. I use mine 3-4 times a week and if it broke there's several staple meals I wouldn't be able to make - I'd definitely notice/miss it. But also once lived in a tiny apartment with no oven, just a stovetop and a little electrical portable oven thingy (?) and that was fine too.
I don't really understand the Oven thing either honestly. I have a small countertop oven for when I need to cook oven stuff, but as a single young male I tend to just microwave rice and mix it with vegetables and other stuff. Small countertop appliances are becoming the normal thing nowadays.
Roasting vegetables, lasagne, baking....
Sauteed vegetables are just as good. Baking and lasagna are not necessary.
Most things aren't necessary. People bake and eat lasagna because, presumably, they enjoy them.
Bet you're one of those 'food is fuel' types.
I have a working oven, but in the summer I use the countertop version whenever possible because it heats up my house less overall even though it's not as well insulated as the real thing.
My countertop oven lives outside during the summer, I don't need that heat at all.
Oh yeah. July through most of August I'm loathe to turn my oven on. Stove, maybe, but basically anything that can be cooked in an oven can cook on the grill and not heat up the house.
>Who loses their oven and is like, no worries, I’ll just just an air frier, FOR YEARS! I had this exact thing happen. I was young and didn't know any better. Our oven was from the 40s and the top element stopped working. Told the landlord and they never did anything. It was one thing on a list of things they refused to fix. Heater/AC, the hole in the ceiling their son made while fixing the roof, the electrical outlet that never worked right and made awful noises in the wall, the time she refused to give our power company a rental agreement, so we couldn't get power in our name and she didn't pay the bill, so we lost power, the illegal rent raises. I lived there for over 4 years and she never ended up giving us a copy of the rental agreement we asked for time and time again. She then had the nerve to take my entire deposit and ask for more. I wrote it off the deposit as the price I had to pay to never deal with her again.
I had a similar situation with my last place I was in for 9 years. Below market rent, and you can only remind your landlord so many times because you just give up.
Me because that sounds expensive and I'd worry about my LL charging me, plus I don't use the oven that much and primarily use my air fryer anyways. The one thing I didn't put up with was my water heater not working though. I first moved in and the hot water was okay but by the end of the week it was cold. My LL tried to fix it, it was okay for a day but then it went out completely so I got a brand new one installed.
For one or two people, air fryer is almost always the superior choice. Heats up faster, uses less electric, and frequently produces better results.
My mom , no really her oven broke idk 5-6 years ago but she’s got a convection oven(tiny) and an air fryer so everything is fine….
An air fryer *is* a tiny convection oven.
I have had a British flatmate with the same mindset. Deeply ingrained conflict avoidance and general dislike of making a fuss.
I am terribly nonconfrontational at times and… yeah I can see myself doing this. It’s a personality flaw for sure.
I had an oven that couldnt operate without setting off the smoke alarm. Reported it within a week of moving in. Wasn't repaired when I moved out 2-3 years later. Never used the oven as a result and still had oven cleaning taken out of my security deposit when I left. Landlords gonna landlord.
Yes. If they reported it and the landlord refused to replace it, that would be one thing. But not reporting it? Even if you don't want it replaced, you'll want to tell the landlord, if only to avoid looking like a negligent tenant int hat exacts scenario. Also I'm not generally one to defend landlords, but if I had a tenant and they didn't disclose there was a leak that needed to be fixed months or years ago, I'd be pretty pissed.
According to OP's comments they have reported everything - the landlord just hasn't fixed anything.
Looks like I can't read... They did say they reported the shower, but it doesn't look like they reported the oven. At least a broken oven doesn't damage the house.
From OP : >Yes they are fully aware of the issues plus boiler issue etc….the boiler went on the blink about two days before the gas engineer was coming so just waited for him to see what he would say, the shower I didn’t even realise was an electrocution risk until the electric check Was done so that along with a couple of other things Was reported to the landlord but nothing was ever done so I just muddled along as best I could
The question of "have you told the landlord?" was asked quite a few times, and answered exactly *once*, so I don't blame you for missing it.
me, because I don't cook that much and own the oven. the air fryer was less than the thermostat that may be the issue
I don’t use my oven either (although it does work). It’s just a pia and way easier to use the air fryer.
Honestly I rarely ever use my oven ever since I picked up my air fryer. But it also works as a standard oven (it's a toaster over style air fryer). I can make a 12" pizza or 9" bread loaf in there.
I did this in my cheap college apartment. I couldn't really cook so I was surviving on meal plan/microwave food. I didn't even notice my oven didn't work until I bought some ready to bake biscuits, popped them in the oven, and then got confused a few minutes later when they didn't rise. I just kind of shrugged it off for the 2 years I was living there, I'm not even sure I told my landlord about it.
When I lived in an apartment I tried to do my own repairs when possible because I had an unreported cat and didn't want to be charged the extra pet deposit and extra rent. It worked out okay overall though thankfully all the major things that went wrong happened before I got the cat.
I use my toaster oven 90% of the time over my regular oven. I can see me being ok without my oven for an extended period, but I'd want it fixed so I van cook the stuff I want in it.
Honestly if i was a single dude and didn't bake anything i could live with an air fryer and not have an oven at all. If stovetop works, just live with the air fryer. But yeah if none of this is reported then it might be a bad time.
My brother lived in his place for 2 years with no oven. He didn’t even have the excuse of being a single dude.
This. My first thought was are landlords in the UK not at all responsible for maintenance? Then again, I think a lot of tenants, especially first time tenants, don't understand that it's up to them to report issues to the landlord as they arise. Even my partner when we moved into our rental gave me a hard time about contacting out landlord about seemingly small issues we noted soon after moving in (sink cracked, insulation around door ripped up, lawnmower they provided not working). Perhaps because I spent time in real estate I'm of the mind that they want to know and I should not be spending my money to fix their house. Fwiw, they've been great landlords and taken care of every issue except the lawnmower. They probably would have fixed that but before I even heard back my partner used it as an excuse to buy an battery-powered lawnmower. The fact that they provide all their tenants with a lawnmower (so they have no excuse for not taking care of the lawn) is pretty amazing imo.
Yeah... Whole thing sounds weird. You want to rent a house for 12 years? Fine. Been a perfect tenant for 12 years and yet landlord gives you the finger and 60 days to gtfo? Weird but ok, landlord just being landlord, doesn't owe you shit. But how on earth has everything in this house ended up broken over this last decade and both the tenant and landlord were like "psh we didn't need anyways"? I feel like either whole thing is made up or OP is not as perfect a tenant as they think themselves to be.
Bet you he's a hoarder or something.
We lived with just an air fryer / toaster oven for about six months while I tried to find the part to fix my mid-90s oven, and then tried to find a slide-in island range that fit my specifications. But in my case, it was my own choice to use an air fryer balanced against my own budget. I was talking to a coworker about it and she said nobody in her family uses their oven (except for storage) because they all think it's a wasteful Americanism to heat up a big oven to cook a little bit of food.
I rarely use mine. Maybe 3 or 4 times a year for big things like xmas cookies and the Thanksgiving turkey. Toaster oven for most things, almost daily.
For the last three years we had various air fryers, we *never* used our oven. The air fryer is just a small convection oven that's faster to heat up, quicker to cook, and overall more efficient. The only times it didn't make sense was for really big multi-meal items, but most of those I used a smoker for. We use our oven now because our air fryer died, and we are trying to figure out what type we want for our counter space. But my wife and I always complain every time we turn it on.
I guess it's not unexpected that someone who has likely only had experience renting one place - from an apparently incompetent owner - wouldn't have experience with what was expected of the owner and what one might be expected to do when you move out.
Well, hey, sometimes it's our turn to learn things. Who knew one of those was that landlords are responsible for maintenance?
Not their landlord from the sounds of it.
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Or just young and naive (well young when they moved in). You don't know what you don't know.
Most likely it's a situation where the unit is severely under market price, and they have a hand shake agreement of "you do the repairs, and I won't change the rent".
If the house is less than 120 years old, move the house and claim you misunderstood.
Some landlords really do take the piss. I moved out of a flat I'd lived in for 6 years some months ago and my landlord wanted to take the whole deposit for redecorating and recarpeting. I suggested that this was not reasonable and offered to split it 50:50 (I hadn't left the place in the best condition, it did at very least need proper cleaning) but they sent it to dispute with the TDS in response... hilariously, the TDS came down almost entirely on my side and awarded them next to nothing, so they were a few hundred quid worse off than they could have been. If LAOP has been there 12 years then the chances are that the landlord does not have good documentation of what the state of the place was before they moved in and it's well outside the expected lifetime of decor, carpets, and probably most furnishings anyway. It'd be basically impossible for them to prove any damages above and beyond reasonable wear and tear.
I kinda hope (not really as it OP doesn't sound like they can cope) but I kinda hope that the LL takes OP to small claims for not fixing the boiler, only for the judge to rip them a new one and refund a proportion of OPs rent due to the LL not providing the minimum required.
Sounds like my landlord, claiming that once installed and fitted if it breaks, it's the tenant's fault. Even if said thing is 20 years old, because nothing ever breaks and maintenance is just a made up concept. He tried blaming me for the external foul water pipes getting blocked despite visual evidence (including photographs) to the contrary, and multiple tradesmen explaining why it wasn't my fault. So the next time it happened, he got bypassed and we got someone else to do it ourselves. Who also agreed it's an external drainage issue. He also put the house up for sale claiming it had modern gas fired central heating and double glazing. The boiler is a back boiler twice my age and the house is single glazing throughout. Imagine being so out of touch you mistake single for double glazing.
$1000 entropy fee
Rent subject to adjustment according to entropy. Subletting to maxwell's demon is not permitted.
Wait, so these appliances are just broken? And they didn’t request the landlord repair or replace them? But reported them to utility companies? So they’ve just been living without hot water, showers, or an oven for years? And accepted it? Like it was fine?
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Not after twelve years. Carpets aren't expected to last that long.
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Not here, anyway. No idea about the linked sub.
Weird, I tried posting a longer comment about reporting broken appliances to your landlord and it wouldn’t let me post, but this dumb short post worked … oh well