Chapter 2 Contents:
Finding a Place to Rent and Moving In
NEW JERSEY HAS A serious shortage of safe, decent, and affordable rental housing. This housing is especially scarce for tenants who receive public assistance, such as disability, old age benefits, or welfare. For low-income people and families, affordable rental housing in good condition can be hard to find.
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Finding a place to rent with a Section 8 voucher
Some landlords refuse to rent to tenants who have Section 8 vouchers. New Jersey law makes it illegal to refuse to rent housing solely because a tenant will pay rent with rental assistance, such as Section 8 or welfare. Cite: N.J.S.A. 10:5-12(g); Franklin Tower One, L.L.C. v. N.M., 157 N.J. 602 (1999). If you have a Section 8 voucher or some other subsidy and a landlord refuses to rent to you, you should immediately contact a lawyer or the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. For further details, see Chapter 16, Housing Discrimination.
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Finding a place to rent through real estate or rental referral agencies
Tenants often seek help in searching for an apartment or house to rent. This chapter explains your rights when you use real estate or rental agencies to find housing.
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Rental referral agencies
Tenants looking for housing sometimes go to rental referral agencies, also called apartment locators or apartment finders. There have been many complaints about some of these agencies. For example, many of these agencies charge between $75 and $125 just for a list of apartments for rent. These lists are often copied out of the local newspapers. Sometimes, people are referred to apartments that are already rented or to apartments that don’t even exist.
Rental referral agencies must follow certain regulations. Cite: N.J.A.C. 11:5-1:32. The most important of these regulations are discussed below.
- The agency must provide you with a written contract. The contract must accurately state the services to be provided and the fee to be charged. It must also state the length of the contract and the actions you must take to use the service. The contract must state the policy for refunds.
- The agency is prohibited from advertising or referring you to non-existing addresses or properties that the agency has not checked for availability.
- The agency cannot refer you to a rental property unless it has the permission of the landlord or the landlord’s agent to refer prospective tenants. Where the agency has obtained a landlord’s oral consent to refer tenants to the property, the agency must get the landlord’s written consent within 24 hours.
- The agency must regularly check with the landlord to see if the apartment remains available by checking all the units advertised in a newspaper each day the ad appears and by checking all units to which tenants are referred every three working days.
- The agency must tell you when they last checked the unit for availability. Agencies may not refer you to any apartment not checked within the previous seven calendar days. The regulations require agencies to have enough telephone lines and workers to receive and answer phone calls from their clients.
- The agency cannot charge you more than $25 before you obtain housing unless:
- the fee charged is deposited promptly in the agency’s escrow account and held until the agency performs all of the services in your contract, or
- the agency posts a cash security in an amount approved by the New Jersey Real Estate Commission.
- An agency must keep copies of all contracts between consumers and the agency for one year. It must also keep copies of written statements showing that landlords gave the agency permission to refer tenants and that the agency checked that rental units were available before referring tenants.
- An agency must post the regulations in their offices and give consumers a copy on request.
Ask questions about the referral service before you use an agency. Ask to examine their contract and look through their agreements with landlords. Make sure the agency lists available apartments and does not simply copy ads from newspapers. To make a complaint about a referral agency, contact the New Jersey Real Estate Commission at:
New Jersey Real Estate Commission
20 West State Street
P.O. Box 328
Trenton, NJ 08625-0328
(609) 292-8300 www.njdobi.org/consumer.htm
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Real estate agents
You can also get help finding an apartment from real estate agencies. These agencies will not ask you for money unless they are going to take you to see a specific apartment. Agencies that actually rent and sell homes and apartments can be a big help in finding a place to live. Do not confuse real estate agencies with apartment finder or rental locator agencies, which do nothing for your money except give you a rental list.
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Finding housing on your own
Try looking in the neighborhood for rental signs. Look in the newspaper and ask friends to help you. If you are looking for an apartment, it is a good idea to get the newspaper at the earliest possible time of the day so that you can try to get to the apartment before anyone else. You should never rent an apartment you haven’t seen.
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Moving in
Moving in marks the real beginning of your relationship with your landlord. This is the moment at which you first occupy your rental unit. This is a good time to make sure the apartment or house is safe and in good condition and, if it is not, to make an agreement with the landlord to make any necessary repairs.
The condition of the apartment when you move in is also important when you move out. Some landlords try to blame tenants for damages that were there when the tenant moved in. This will allow the landlord to keep all or part of your security deposit if he can show that you damaged the apartment. There are steps you can take to get the landlord to repair anything that is broken when you move in and to keep the landlord from blaming you for the damage later on.
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Inspect the property
Before you move in, make sure that the apartment has received a certificate of occupancy (C.O.) from the town housing inspector. Not all towns have laws requiring a certificate of occupancy. Call your town inspector to find out if the town has such a law. Also, check the following:
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Bathroom—Check the water pressure and hot water, and look for leaks. Make sure that the toilet works. Check for loose tiles on the walls and floor, and look for bugs or signs of bugs.
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Kitchen—Check the water pressure, leaks, hot and cold water, stove, and refrigerator, if any; look for bugs.
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Ceiling—Check the ceiling and walls for water leak stains, dampness, loose plaster, holes, or cracks.
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Windows—Check the locks, screens, glass, and frames.
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Floors—Look for rotten wood, loose tiles, splinters, water stains, and cigarette burns.
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Electricity—Make sure that the light switches and fixtures work. Take a lamp and try all of the outlets, and look for hanging or open wires. It is sometimes not possible to check the working condition of electrical switches and outlets because the power may have been shut off in the apartment.
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Heat—Turn on the heating system and make sure that it works properly, even if you rent in the summer.
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Basement—Look for rat holes, dirt, trash, leaks, loose wires, broken windows, crumbling walls, and termites.
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Smoke detectors—Check for installation and make sure they work properly.
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Doors—Check for dead-bolt locks and peepholes on the entrance door.
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After you have checked each of these items, make a list of what is broken or in poor condition. Ask the landlord or superintendent to sign the list. If they refuse, get one of your friends or neighbors to sign and date it. It is a very good idea to take pictures. You can also talk to other tenants who already live there. For example, if you are renting in the summer, they can tell you if there’s enough heat in the winter.
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Get promises to repair in writing
Ask the landlord to make all necessary repairs immediately. However, you should not accept the landlord’s spoken promise. It is very important to get the landlord to write out what he or she promises to fix and when. Any promises made by the landlord that are not in writing, with the date and the landlord’s signature, are difficult to enforce. If you try to enforce a spoken promise, it will be your word against the landlord’s. A written agreement also protects you later on if the landlord tries to say that you were the one who caused the damage.
If you cannot get the landlord to sign a written agreement or statement, then you should send your list of defective conditions in a letter to the landlord. Explain in the letter that you expect that the landlord will make the repairs. Send the letter by certified mail, return receipt requested. Keep a copy of the letter and the return receipt for use later. If you can, take pictures of the defective conditions and hold on to them. You will need these documents should the landlord seek to wrongfully evict you or keep your security deposit.
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