Even More Ways to Protect Yourself from Losses When Renting
In this week’s blog we will discuss more ways tenants can avoid financial losses when renting.
Keep Records
In last week's blog, we discussed different ways tenants can protect themselves from losses. Some of the key points we discussed were, open lines of communication, receipts, understanding your lease, and the importance of keeping copies and records of these items. However, it’s important to keep records of everything you can, regardless of how much you like your landlord, or how much your landlord likes you. When you submit a maintenance request, or any communications regarding the property, the lease, the building, the unit, your neighbours or your tenancy, make sure you do it in writing and make sure it’s time stamped so you can prove when it was sent.
Know Your Responsibilities
Knowing what you are responsible for will help you understand what you are ultimately liable for. Therefore, understanding your responsibilities to your landlord, your neighbours and your surrounding community will help prevent you from incurring any unnecessary costs and damages. If you want to know what your responsibilities are, the lease and the residential tenancy act (RTA) for your province should have these details.
Dispute Resolution and Filing Complaints
In the previous two paragraphs, we discussed keeping records and knowing your responsibilities. These two items are important when it comes to dispute resolution since you know what was required of you, and you will be able to prove that you did what was required of you. If you aren’t able to talk to your landlord and work towards a resolution, your next legal resource is the Provincial Court or the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service (RTDRS) for Alberta, for British Columbia, for Manitoba, for Newfoundland and Labrador, for Saskatchewan and for Ontario. Alternatively, some academic institutions have legal services that are available to students at a reasonable cost or free of charge. If you live in Edmonton, the University of Alberta has Student Legal Services, if you live in Calgary; the University of Calgary has Student Legal Assistance. Same applies to UBC, UVic, MUN, University of Winnipeg and Manitoba and most of the major Universities in Ontario. These resources will help you settle the dispute and identify any sort of penalties, compensation or legal recourse that is due.
Take Pictures
A picture is really worth a thousand words and a video is worth even more. Where possible, take pictures or video recordings of any issues that need to be addressed. These images can come in handy when dealing with any disputes, damages or insurance claims. Where possible, be sure to do a move-in and a move-out inspection and keep a record of the inspection report.
Understanding Evictions
Although evictions have been covered in the previous points in this blog, we think it is very important to stress that you should understand what constitutes a legal eviction. We will discuss this in detail in next week's blog, but if you have the time, educate yourself on this topic since a lot of students and tenants tend to lose money when they are evicted.
