Solano County Listings: Residential homes for sale

LOTS & LAND

MOBILE/FLOATING

Commercial

qualifies as does the lack of electricity in a bedroom.

in the middle of summer, it might not reduce the rent at all.

If you decide to withhold rent, the first decision you have to make is how much to withhold. Technically, you should only withhold that amount which would reduce the rent to the actual rental value of the property in its current condition.

How do you know what the reasonable rental value is? I don’t know. Basically you make a good faith guess.

lord just might file an eviction lawsuit, called an unlawful detainer, to try and get you out for not paying the rent.

strated by depositing the money into the bank account, it will go a long way toward helping your argument.

A short list of habitability issues include a property with toxins (e.g. lead or chemicals), inadequate sanitation, ineffective waterproofing (e.g. leaking roof), lack of running water, bad electrical system, inadequate natural light and ventilation, and any other serious safety issue.

The above list isn’t comprehensive, but you get the idea.

Certainly your leaking roof

If the rent is $2,500 per month and the furnace is broken during the winter, the rental value may be only $500 and you’d be justified in withholding $2,000 per month.

If the same problem occurred

Once you’ve made your guess you notify the landlord in writing that you will be withholding, in my example, $2,000 per month until the problem is fixed.

Although the law doesn’t require it, it is good practice to then put the $2,000 per month into a special bank account you’ve opened for that purpose. That’s because the land-

During eviction trials, judges hear from tenants all the time that they were just withholding rent, when in fact they just didn’t have the money to pay the rent.

If you can show the judge you weren’t refusing to pay the rent because you couldn’t, as demon-

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Tim Jones is a real estate attorney in Fairfield. If you have a real estate question you would like answered in this column, you can send an email to AllThingsRealEstate@ TJones-Law.com.