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View Full Version : Can we sue a owner if he wasn't licensed to rent and the Judge made us move?


deb cedergren
Sep 12, 2013, 10:17 AM
We moved into a house. Which for the 1st onths rent we agreed upon us cleaning & painting the house. After we were there a few weeks we found out the owner wasn't licensed to be renting the house. He tried evicting us however we wanted it to go to court. After we explained to the Judge that the owner wasn't licensed he gave us 5 days to move only because it wasn't licensed to be living there.
Can we sue the owner for expenses to move in & out? And the money we paid for paint and cleaning and the landscape that we started to do?

deb cedergren
Sep 12, 2013, 10:24 AM
We found a house and we met with the owner. We agreed upon one year lease which he kept making excuses not to give it to us). We also agreed that if we painted the house and cleaned we would have the 1st month free rent. So my husband & I spent 2 weeks cleaning.
We moved in and a few weeks later we found out that the owner was not
Licensed to be renting the house.
We thought we were going to be living there for a year and so we painted and started doing some landscaping.
The owner tried raising the rent and also told us he wanted us to move because he wanted his daughter to move in. He gave us a handwritten eviction notice. I told him that we wanted a legal eviction so it went to court.
We told the Judge all of our problems and also that the owner was not licensed to be renting the house.
The Judge said that he would give us his decision by mail. We received a notice which ONLY because the house was not licensed he gave us 5 days to move.
My question is can we sue the owner for moving in & out and for supplies including landscaping and we had to put items in storage plus we hired 2 people to help us move. Can we sue for things such as this??

N0help4u
Sep 12, 2013, 10:24 AM
Sounds like you got a free months rent and it wouldn't be the landlords responsibility for tenants moving expenses. My guess is the Judge may award you a small portion but more likely tell you to chalk it up to learned lesson to be more cautious.

LisaB4657
Sep 12, 2013, 10:43 AM
Yes, you can sue the owner of the property for your expenses. As long as you have a decision from a judge that the owner was not licensed to lease the property you have a very good case for a lawsuit.