[quote=Firefighter Dave]It has all been via verbal agreement and e-mail exchange.[/quote]
If it were verbal agreements only, I’d say you would be s.o.l… Verbal agreements in the 21st century stick as much as Kim Kardashian sticks to Kris Humphries. People this day an age never say what the mean. In other words, most people these days flat out lie and say one thing and do the other….
Email, though might be good thing. Did he respond to you on email specifically agreeing to said things of how much your “slow rent increase would be”?
If so, why don’t you dig up that email copy him on it and tell him, “hey dude, remember what you promised?”
If not, I’m sorry you’re probably s.o.l… Because how exactly “slow rent increase” defined?
In the future, I would never EVER offer to a landlord to do ANY home improvement unless you have a write contract of him/her paying you back immediately in terms of free rent for Y months/years for exactly this situation you are in.
Calculate how much you spent on the home improvements (minus your labor, because I guess that’s a going to be a wash), and show him her the receipts, and if it’s still more than how much a discount you’ve gotten off in rent so far, maybe he/she won’t be such a jerk and rip you off and try to be fair (doubt it though). On the other hand, if how much you got off of your rent so far is already more than how much you spent, well i guess it’s fair for him to jack up the rent to market value now.
