Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Illinois

My sister and I own a townhome that we inherited after our mother passed. We decided to rent the unit until the RE market bounced back, since she passed just a year after the housing crash. We wanted to sell this year, but current tenants asked if we could wait another year before selling. My sister and I agreed we could wait it out until Spring of 2018. We both live over an hour from the property and over the years have had to do a lot of repairs. We have been breaking even over the last several year, and with the numerous repairs the last few are in the red. A year ago we replaced the furnance, and this year we have had to do roof repairs and replace dry wall due to water damage. After the first heavy rain a few weeks ago the roof started to leak. It seemed to be repaired over the last 3 month. Our tenant is now refusing to pay the rent, which we need in order to do the additional repairs. We already put a couple thousand into the repairs this year. I can understand their position of being frustrated that the issue has not been fixed, but we haven't ignored any problems either. What can we do to get tenant to pay? We even gave them a credit on their rent due to the contractors lack of reliability and inconvience on them.


Asked on 12/04/17, 1:55 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

Unfortunately if the roof is leaking your tenants will have a good defense to an eviction case where the reason is non-payment of rent: that the unit is not habitable due to leakage. These issues could have been part of an option agreement but that time has passed potentially, but not necessarily fatally to a sale deal. About the only way around this is to fix the roof, and if the leakage was the result of an insured risk (ie not just age and deterioration), there may be insurance money. A good roofing contractor may be helpful. You also should have loss of rent coverage on your own insurance, but it may not be available if the roof leakage was a result of your own negligent maintenance. Lastly, if the roof is the responsibility of the association, then you may not have to come out of pocket - this may be a matter of age and deterioration that mandates roof replacement with reserve funds, not you own. Lots of homework here. There may be other options but you'd have to see an attorney who could review the townhome declaration first.

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Answered on 12/06/17, 8:10 am


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