Need advice. I rent a house and have never been late on a payment. I have reached out to the landlord numerous times regarding several issues regarding the house but they say that someone will come fix it and the person never comes, when I mention the issue again they ignore me. For example, the electricity in the upstairs bathroom does not work. We tried to pop the breaker but it didn’t work. We messaged them on July 1st and again on the 15th and we were ignored. Furthermore, our water bill has been extremely high. We have compared it to our neighbors and theirs is 1/3rd of ours and they have sprinklers. (We are also not home for the majority of the time). The bathroom toilet downstairs continuously runs, at the moment we turned it off to see if this helps but the neighbor thinks we have a busted pipe. The previous tenants had the same issue with the landlord and stopped paying rent for several months according to the neighbor. Obviously that is not an option for me and I would like to know what to do! Thanks!
Location: Illinois
Comments
Maybe code enforcement could come out and take a look at the place? If they find violations that might help. You could ask the water company to come out and take a look based on the high water bill. They won’t fix it but they might look for a problem. Last, you could retain a lawyer to write them a letter about the problems and make a demand for repairs. You could also pay a plumber to come out and look. You said you didn’t want to go the withhold rent route but you could look into the fix and deduct route. A lawyer can advise you on following the process properly.