It’s pretty awful when, as a landlord, you have to go to the Régie du Logement (the rental board of Québec).
Our costs went up considerately compared to those of the old owner because the value of the building is much higher now so both our property taxes and the insurance premium went up considerably. We’re paying more than twice the premium as the previous owner, partly because she was underinsured.
Since we want to be good landlords we used a online form provided by the Régie to calculate exactly how much we legally could raise the rent. And even tough I showed them the calculations and I was willing to show them all our bills, all of our tennants refused the proposed rent increase. That is their right but still.
Our tenants pay a really low rent. We know, because we also enjoyed such a low rent when we were tenants. When I tell people the rent our tenants pay for their apartments they always shake there heads in disbelief. It could be easily twice as much.
The problem is that the rents were so low that the owner couldn’t afford the maintenance anymore. So we really have to increase the rent in order to be able to do some major repairs to the house. We don’t have much savings left and some things just need to be done in the next couple of years.
So to the Régie I went, expecting to encounter long lines of other disgruntled landlords. It was raining heavily and their offices are in an office building in the Olympic Village. So I wasn’t in a good mood when I finally got there. But no, there was nobody before me and a friendly man helped me with my application. He was handicapped and filling out my forms went rather slow so I asked him if I could help. “Yeah, sure!,” he replied, so I ended up copying the alterations he made to one of the forms to the other 11 forms.
Then they all got a big stamp on them, and I had to pay almost 200 dollars in fees.
Now we’ll have to wait for the day of the hearing, when the Régie will decide what the new rents of our tenants will be. I hope they will be high.
It’s difficult to be an evil landlord, but I’m getting better at it every day.
Mar 27 2007
Régie
It’s pretty awful when, as a landlord, you have to go to the Régie du Logement (the rental board of Québec).
Our costs went up considerately compared to those of the old owner because the value of the building is much higher now so both our property taxes and the insurance premium went up considerably. We’re paying more than twice the premium as the previous owner, partly because she was underinsured.
Since we want to be good landlords we used a online form provided by the Régie to calculate exactly how much we legally could raise the rent. And even tough I showed them the calculations and I was willing to show them all our bills, all of our tennants refused the proposed rent increase. That is their right but still.
Our tenants pay a really low rent. We know, because we also enjoyed such a low rent when we were tenants. When I tell people the rent our tenants pay for their apartments they always shake there heads in disbelief. It could be easily twice as much.
The problem is that the rents were so low that the owner couldn’t afford the maintenance anymore. So we really have to increase the rent in order to be able to do some major repairs to the house. We don’t have much savings left and some things just need to be done in the next couple of years.
So to the Régie I went, expecting to encounter long lines of other disgruntled landlords. It was raining heavily and their offices are in an office building in the Olympic Village. So I wasn’t in a good mood when I finally got there. But no, there was nobody before me and a friendly man helped me with my application. He was handicapped and filling out my forms went rather slow so I asked him if I could help. “Yeah, sure!,” he replied, so I ended up copying the alterations he made to one of the forms to the other 11 forms.
Then they all got a big stamp on them, and I had to pay almost 200 dollars in fees.
Now we’ll have to wait for the day of the hearing, when the Régie will decide what the new rents of our tenants will be. I hope they will be high.
It’s difficult to be an evil landlord, but I’m getting better at it every day.
By mare • english •