Structural issue with newly rented apartment

kevthecelt

Hi all. Looking for some advice on what to do here and what our rights are as tenants.

We moved into a seemingly lovely apartment in January. I viewed the apartment in late December with an agency (although I was given quite a rushed viewing in retrospect) before signing the lease I asked the agent if there was anything we should know about the apartment before we sign the lease and they said no.

Upon moving in we immediately noticed damp in the upper corner of the sitting room ceiling which had been crudely painted over. This proceeded to get worse with black and blue mold subsequently forming (all photographed by me for the record) and my girlfriend ended up having a cough for approximately 5 weeks. Having Googled this it seems that mold can have respiratory effects on people depending on how bad it is.

It turns out that there is an issue with the structural membrane above us and it is affecting 2 or 3 apartments on our level. I asked the agents why this wasn't communicated to us before moving in and they said they did not know about it even though they had taken photos of every inch of the apartment prior to us moving in, around 60 photos all in, NONE of which included the damp area on the ceiling. (they even took a picture of a single bent blind by the window) Very fishy.

My landlord had engineers out during the week and they cut a 1 metre sq hole in our ceiling to find out where the issue lay exactly. We now have a pot in the corner of the room collecting the drops that come through the eye sore of a hole and I'm sure it is not great at keeping the heat in either.

So what are our rights here? Is there anyone I can contact on the matter to complain or get the rent reduced/renegotiated in some way? Even though I love the apartment I feel completely deceived by all this carry on. He says it's going to get sorted but has not given me a concrete date. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!

djimi

At this point, seeing as how the landlord has been made aware of it and is seemingly taking steps to resolve the issue, I would say that the best thing that you can do is wait it out and ensure that the repairs are being carried out in a timely fashion. Just bear in mind that if its a structural issue that is affecting multiple units then the repairs may well be outside of the landlords control and they will have to work with the complex management company to get it sorted.

With regards being compensated for the issues, I dont know is the honest answer. Again, as the landlord is seemingly taking steps to resolve the issue then its entirely possible that they are fulfilling their obligation to you. Maybe give Threshold a call and have a chat with them to see what they reckon, but proving that the landlord/agent actively deceived you might prove tricky.

Ray Palmer

You would want to be very clear with what is wrong.
I would say you don't know what is wrong given what you said. It might just be semantics but there is no such thing as a structural membrane in your standard building this would be experimental building construction.

You may have a leak in a membrane. From what you have said there may be a leak in the roof which is made up of different materials and at least one membrane.

Chances are the roof was constructed incorrectly. Not uncommon to have problems with a roof on relatively new builds especially if materials being used are not known to the person doing the construction. Certain folds and fastening may seem very trivial during construction can cause big issues later.

There is probably a leak that accumulates under the roof and then slowly seeps into the apartments. There will be no quick solution they'll spends a long time trying to pin point the problem so they don't have to do the whole roof again. They will be lucky to find it and eventually probably have to redo the roof.

As a tenant I would move out and you have the right to break the lease given it is leaking