This day a year ago we bought our house. Today is also the hearing in our rent-increase-case at the Régie du Logement. I amassed all the paperwork I needed to proof that the rent increase is justified and even dug up my dusty briefcase from a moving box in the basement. I was prepared.
The meeting was a disaster. One of our tenants showed up in person and started a litany on how bad the shape of their apartment was. She forgot to mention that I actually spend the most time fixing their apartment. Even though the judge told her to shut up since this hearing was not about that it set the tone. I was the evil landlord and the judge was clearly against me. She didn’t buy my argument that we should be able to include the cost we made installing an alarm system, since it lowered our insurance premium. She also didn’t want to look at the amount we actually pay for the insurance but copied the amount from the policy, which didn’t include 250 dollars tax and service charges.
I also needed additional documentation on the amount of taxes the previous owner paid, and gave me two weeks to cough up those documents.
One positive point: Our tenants probably have to to pay the cost of the review by the Régie.
I left quite discouraged but fortunately after a while that feeling went away. We’ll see what the outcome will be, and how much we can actually raise the rents.
Jun 27 2007
Hearing
This day a year ago we bought our house. Today is also the hearing in our rent-increase-case at the Régie du Logement. I amassed all the paperwork I needed to proof that the rent increase is justified and even dug up my dusty briefcase from a moving box in the basement. I was prepared.
The meeting was a disaster. One of our tenants showed up in person and started a litany on how bad the shape of their apartment was. She forgot to mention that I actually spend the most time fixing their apartment. Even though the judge told her to shut up since this hearing was not about that it set the tone. I was the evil landlord and the judge was clearly against me. She didn’t buy my argument that we should be able to include the cost we made installing an alarm system, since it lowered our insurance premium. She also didn’t want to look at the amount we actually pay for the insurance but copied the amount from the policy, which didn’t include 250 dollars tax and service charges.
I also needed additional documentation on the amount of taxes the previous owner paid, and gave me two weeks to cough up those documents.
One positive point: Our tenants probably have to to pay the cost of the review by the Régie.
I left quite discouraged but fortunately after a while that feeling went away. We’ll see what the outcome will be, and how much we can actually raise the rents.
By mare • english, home, montréal, paper, rant •