Good day! i hope someone could possibly help me out with our dilemma regarding an apartment we rented last year.
My friend and I found this old apartment located in sta.mesa, bacood last Oct 2007. We looked and researched for apartments for a month but had a hard time finding one that fits our budget. until we found this old 2 storey/ 2 bedroom apartment in bacood. Unfortunately, the apartment didn't looked really nice at all, it hasn't been rented for almost 3 years! There were no electricity and water connection, the bathroom was just nasty and the kitchen sink was broken, in other words it needed serious fixing. but what we liked about it was the rental fee which was only P9,000/ month and it was a huge sized apartment which is very rare in manila with that price. we did some serious thinking on getting the place because of its situation but due to the urgency to transfer to a new place because our contract from our previous condo was about to expire, we eventually, rented it and paid for the 3 months deposit.
We moved all our stuff but still couln't really stay there because there were no electricity and water. We asked the landlord to have all the utilities fix since that's his responsibility. so we waited for a week and followed up with him. but to no avail, he didn't bother to apply for the new lines for each utility. so we asked him that the kitchen needs a new sink and the bathroom needs new toilet and bathroom sink as well. Again, he was slow on doing all his responsibilities. We asked the landlord to at least fix some of the stuff like the toilet bowl, sink and electrical wires. He agreed and asked an assistant who at the same time is sort of his caretaker in that apartment, who can do carpentry and electricals. It took his assistant one month to have everything fix (well, not all was fixed) we eventually, hired our own carpenter to fix other stuff in the apartment, the landlord agreed that he will shoulder the repair cost and if there are things that needs to be fix he will just reimburse it, we agreed but we couldn't help but fix some of the things in that nasty apartment but we know that those are personal expenses and we wont reimburse other stuff that we had fixed. As for the electricity,since we couldn't sit and wait for the landlord to do all the fixing, i volunteered to go to meralco to apply for a new line. Unfortunately again, when i got to meralco, the unit that we were renting didn't have any outstanding balance but the previous tenant, who moved to the next door has an outstanding balance of 47k, our unit's meralco line was under her name. So i told Cathy (the neighbor) to fix it since i can't apply for a new line not unless she pays her debt. She took my meralco application and told me that she knows people from meralco and that she will take care of my application.
Every single week i would always ask cathy about the status of my application, but she kept saying, it's already been procesed. so we eventually believed her. after 4 months, she kept saying the same thing, we realized we were being fooled at and she kept stalling my application form because she couldn't pay her debt. after that i asked the landlord to do something about it, again, he didnt do anything as if he didnt care! around december, the landlord was already asking for the months rent an the post dated checks. i told him that i will not give him the pdc not unless we have electricity already. he agreed!
Finally, we will have electricity this week, coz i did all the follow-ups to meralco and they approved my application coz i made Cathy pay her debt. And with this comes my real dilemma! I just texted our landlord and informed him that meralco will put the meter within the week. i told our landlord to edit our contract of lease and change the date, based on what we agreed last year (thru text messages) that he will change the lease date once we have our electricity. So when i texted him that, he replied with "no i will not change the date, you signed the contract around oct and that was it" i will not pay the the reimbursed repair cost, i already spent your 3 months deposit on repairs! I was shocked with all his text statements! all of a sudden he has amnesia and completely forgot all our agreemet. Although i told him that i still have most of the text messages that he sent just to be proved that he agreed on certain things.
We already spent around 40k just for the repairs alone, which he should've shouldered in the first place, but manipulated us and told us that he will reimburse it all the repair cost. he also told me that i already ower him 5 months rent!!! which i told him that we already agreed that our lease will start on the day we have electricity! And it wasn't our fault that the electricity got delayed that long, he should blame his other tenant (cathy) which stalled my application hoping that she wont get caught and and she wont have to pay for her debts!
As of now, we are very disappointed, broke and we dont know what to do next?? We already spent about 40k for repairs and now he's already asking for the 12 pdc as rental fee. We cant pull out our deposit coz the landlord said he already used it up to pay for repair cost! I hope somebody could enlighten me regarding this matter. We can't back out anymore and move out after months of waiting for electricity which is now under my name...we can't transfer to another apartment coz we already spent so much money and emotions on repairs and dealing with the problems of the apartment! if we had knew that this will happened we could have waited a few more weeks to look a better apartment. What can we do?
Please i hope someone could give me an advise...i would really appreciate it!
Please email me at isiss78@yahoo.com
Thank you so much!!
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