It’s Not Hard to Calculate Your Square Footage
Question: I live in Los Angeles County. Is there an agency that can tell me the square footage of my apartment unit? I asked the landlord about it and he said doesn’t know but will take a measurement and let me know when he gets a chance. I don’t want to wait. Can you help?
Answer: The county assessor’s records only contain data on the square footage of the entire building, not the individual units. The building departments of most cities have some building plans, which usually include data on the square footage of units, but may only be able to access recent records.
Do the math yourself. To compute the square footage of your unit simply multiply the length of each room by its width, then add the areas of the individual rooms together to get the total square footage of the unit. Be sure to include bathrooms and closets in your computations.
Landlord May Boost Rate for Roommate
Q: I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles and I’m having a problem with my landlord. There is only one occupant named on the rental agreement, but the landlord allowed the leaseholder to live with a roommate or spouse for six years.
Can the landlord now ask for a new rental agreement and a rent increase? The property is under rent control.
A: Just because the landlord didn’t charge rent control’s legally allowed 10% rent increase for an extra occupant in the past, doesn’t mean that he can’t do so now. He can give you a 30-day notice to raise the rent by 10% for the extra occupant and he can require you to sign a new rental agreement listing two occupants.
If your roommate subsequently moves out of the apartment and you don’t replace him or her, you can give the landlord a 30-day notice and he will be required to again lower the rent.
Flaws in Grounds for Breaking Lease
Q: I live in a leased single-family home. I have lived here for five months on a one-year lease. Now I want to move before the lease is up for a couple of reasons.
First, the landlord required me to leave a $2,300 deposit to reserve the place because he said there were other interested parties. I felt like I was forced to take the place because of the large amount of deposit money at stake.
Second, the day I signed the contract, I found out that the fourth bedroom in the residence (it was advertised as having four bedrooms) had no closet. At best it could be called a bonus room. The landlord insisted that it was still four bedrooms.
Afraid of losing my $2,300 deposit, and with no place else to move, I reluctantly rented the place anyway.
Do I have a potentially unenforceable lease agreement because it was entered into unwillingly and under the threat of losing a large deposit as the result of clearly false advertising?
A: As far as I know, the law does not recognize bedrooms without closets as “bonus rooms.”
It’s also not clear to me that a room without closets cannot be considered a bedroom, although it may be an unconventional one. Your argument that the owner used false advertising to market the house seems to have no legal merit.
Your argument that the deposit was high, therefore somehow illegal or improper, is equally flawed. If you believe that a deposit for a rental is too high, don’t leave it. Whenever you leave a deposit for a pending rental, it is at risk. Be sure you want the place before leaving deposit money.
*
Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, an apartment owners’ service group, and the manager of public affairs for the California Apartment Law Information foundation, which disseminates information about landlord/tenant law to renters and owners in California. Mail your question on any aspect of apartment living to AAGLA, c/o Kevin Postema, 12012 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025 or e-mail to AptlifeAAGLA@aol.com.
