I live an an Apartment complex in Maryland on the ground floor. I came home Sunday to find water leaking from my bathroom ceiling. My bathroom is in my bedroom, and the carpet from my bedroom to the front door in parts of my living room was soaked. I called the leasing office right away to get maintenance to come over. I spoke with someone that claimed to be contacting maintenance. After that I went to the neighbors upstairs to see if they had a leak. The neighbors admitted that they had a leak in their bathroom which their carpet was wet but they had not reported it to maintenance. I call the leasing office again this time no one answers and I get the number for emergency service. The maintenance guy comes out, he is shocked by all the water coming from the ceiling. He goes upstairs fixes their leak but says he can't do anything about the water on the carpet. Monday they send a carpet guy out he sets up fans removes the baseboards, and we are instructed to leave them running for 3 days straight. I have water damage to my ceiling in my bedroom, water damage to the sink in my bathroom, and they tell me that they don't have to replace the carpet. I don't feel safe staying in this apartment because I'm scared of mold and what that can do to one's health. I have been trying to contact the property manager to request moving to a new apartment. I just want to know what I should do, and if I can legally move to a different apartment. This is the 3rd leak I have had from the apartment above me and the most severe. I don't want to wait around for anything else to happen. Any advice would be greatly appreciated at this point.

Hello k:

The first issue you have is whether your apartment is "habitable". It's the legal threshold that has to be pierced. You and your landlord or a judge will have to make that determination. Without seeing it, I certainly can't. However, the courts won't make it easy to pierce. In other words, wet, loud and removed baseboards probably doesn't constitute an inhabitable residence.

Therefore, if your apartment is habitable, then you have no rights other than what's in your lease. I'm sure your lease doesn't require them to offer you another apartment.

As long as they fix the damage, and it looks like they are, even if they didn't do it very fast, I think you're out of gas.

excon

I agree with excon, but there may be some extenuating curcumstances here. First, do you have renter's insurance? If so, do they cover the damage? Second, if this is the third time its happened, then the landlords may have been negligent in not fixing the root cause. Third, if the neighbor was aware of there leak and did not report it, then you may be able to sue them for the costs to replace the carpet.

But I agree that you probably don't have grounds to break the lease or force changing units. At least not until mold starts to appear.