« Know Your Rights! Part One | Main | Graffiti: Calle Morelos »
February 24, 2008
Rent
By law, a landlord can raise the rent on a property here each year by up to 10%.
Our landlord is very considerate of the tenants. When we first inquired about the apartment, he asked what we did. I said that I was a student, because at the time, that was the most recent thing that I had been: a student of Spanish at a college in Denver. He was concerned to hear this, he said, because we were asking to live in a building with many families, some with small children, and he didn't want there to be any loud, late night parties. I assured him that he didn't have to worry about that. If a need for a loud all-night party arose, we would have it elsewhere. I really liked the apartment, and would have promised a lot to get it.
The first year we lived here, there was no raise in rent. Our neighbors across the hall, Alberto and Roxana, who moved in a year before we did, had just had their rent raised for the first time. It seems the landlord doesn't raise the rent after the first year, so all tenants have the same rate for their first two years. That is a nice gesture on his part; it is not the typical practice here in Mexico. Yet at the beginning of this, our third year, we were notified that the rent would be raised.
Our rent is due at the first of the month, and the procedure is the same every time. I walk it down to the landlord's house, which is a block away, and I ring the doorbell. The landlord and his wife are an older couple, but they are successful enough to have a very lovely house and two servants. The servants are two women that seem to have been with the family for a considerable time. As far as anyone living here knows, they have always been with them. One of them usually shouts out a window at me - "¡Oye!" - and I answer back, "¡Buenos tardes! Tengo un pago de renta..." They come out, we exchange brief pleasantries, and the cash is traded for the reciept.
This past year, it became relatively frequent that the lady taking the cash and handing over the receipt would inform me of some caveat, such as the fact that the receipt had not been signed, or the printed receipts were not yet ready, so I could either wait to pay or accept a "provisional," hand-written receipt. The reason for this was always that el señor was away being treated for cancer. When he returned home, he would fill out the receipts or sign them; it was our choice as to what we wanted to do.
We always paid right then, accepting either the receipt that had not been signed or the hand-written receipt. We were a bit overly cautious for the first few months we were here, but it soon became obvious that the landlord, his wife and the two servants were not out to swindle us. In fact, in a couple of occasions, they were outright generous in their offers. When we were going to be gone for a month to Buenos Aires and would return two weeks after the regular date on which we turned in the money, I was trying to explain that I wanted to come by the week before we left to drop off the money in advance. I made it only to the point in my brief speech explaining that we were leaving the country and would not be home for a month before the woman I was talking to presumed that I was asking if it was okay to pay after we got back, nearly three weeks late. She said that would be fine. I was shocked and explained that I was actually giving them notice of an intention to pay in advance, knowing that they liked to prepare the receipts ahead of time. She said that would be fine too.
When we took our payment over in January, one of the ladies answered the doorbell and explained that the receipts were not signed, because el señor was in the hospital again, and we said that was not a problem. She told us that there would be a rent increase this year for us, but they did not know how much it would be, because el señor had not yet decided. They said they would come by and notify us when they found out, but the month went by and we had no notice. We took some extra bills over when we went to pay in February, but they still did not know what the increase would be because el señor was still in the hospital and had not been able to decide on the rent.
On Thursday night, one of the servants stopped by and notified us that the rent increase would be 10%, the full amount allowed by law. Shawn commented that he was a bit surprised about that, but I noted that they might well have a lot of hospital bills to pay, since the landlord had been in the hospital a lot. It had been two years with no increase for us, so it woked out to be about 5% a year.
About five minutes Alberto knocked on the door and came in to talk to us. He told us that the servant had come by to tell them that their rent would be 10% higher this year, and apparently it would be 10% higher for everyone in the building. Since inflation this past year was only about 3.5% and wage increases have been 4%, everyone was upset about this and felt it was unfounded. They also received an increase last year too. I commented to Alberto my suspicion about hospital bills and he said that he did not think that was the problem. The general opinion of the residents is, that with el señor in the hospital, his children were advising their mother on all his business dealings, and are very avaricious. Unlike their parents, they are not interested in maintaining good relations with the people who are both their neighbors and tenants.
The rest of our neighbors had already come up with a plan. Each of the tenants would go over to the landlord's house one at a time to protest the raise in the rent. The neighbors right below us would go that night, and then Roxana was going to go talk to her on Saturday. Alberto would let us know if it ended up being necessary that we would have to go over there; being that Spanish is not our first language, it would make sense for us to go last. Maybe she would be reasonable and change her mind before all eight of the apartments sent delegates over.
Last night Alberto came over at around midnight, and he told us that he had some unfortunate news. His wife was going over to have her talk with the landlord's wife, and while she was waiting, they received a phone call. One of the servants answered and then broke down into a fit of crying. Roxana excused herself and returned home. This morning, we have yet to hear anything official, but the general thinking among the neighbors is that our landlord died yesterday.
We are very sad about it. As far as landlords go, he was very fair and understanding, but beyond that, he was a very nice gentleman. We will miss him.
Posted by crispy at February 24, 2008 09:48 AM
Comments
Chris, I'm confused about why everyone is so upset. Your initial paragraph states that the landlord is legally entitled to raise the rent by 10% every year. Later you say that he didn't raise the rent last year, when he could have.
So 'splain to me what the problem is, please.
And did he really die? If so, qepd. (Que en paz descanse).
Posted by: Cristina at February 27, 2008 10:37 AM
Yeah, okay. Let me clarify that.
He is legally allowed to raise it 10%. This is true.
He didn't raise our rent last year, but he raised the rent for everyone else last year. I am not at all sure how much it was raised for everyone else, but it was not the full 10%. It was something more in accordance with inflation...like 4%, maybe?
We feel like, since we didn't have it raised the first year, that it is not entirely unfair to have it raised by 10% on this, the start of our third year here. However, the neighbors that had it raised (say) 4% last year, and now have to pay another 10% this year, are upset about it. They feel like it is in great excess of inflation, and it seems that the landlord, in years before, always raised the rent more or less with inflation only. In the memory of the current tenants, it has never been raised 10%.
As for the other matter, the servants at the landlord's house told one of the residents in our building just a couple of days ago that the landlord was very sick. There is some thought among our neighbors that they are not revealing that he has died, for some reason. I'm not quite sure what the point would be in doing that, but there it is.
Posted by: Chris Coen at March 1, 2008 12:53 AM
Does any place publish obituaries?
[crispy says: That's a good idea, but ultimately unnecessary. When I went to pay the rent on the first, they confirmed that he had, in fact died. The verb used, however, was fallar, and I'm not used to that being used for "to die" but rather, "to fail." They explained that the receipts were not ready because el señor falló, or as I first took it, he failed...failed to sign the receipts? Then it dawned on me, with the way the servant was telling me this, that she meant that he had died.]
Posted by: Mark Allen at March 2, 2008 03:42 PM
when our landlord of more than 60+ years passed away a few years ago, and the building passed into the hands of his inept 60-something-year-old son, the building went from a state of benign neglect to out-right neglect. the idiot kid sold it to the managerial company he had hired, and they are even worse to the 80-year-old complex than he was. always beware change - it might be worse than what you had! sorry for your loss....
Posted by: brett at March 5, 2008 02:43 PM