I have rented out an apartment with two other roommates just this past June. We had paid the security deposit and signed the lease despite a few damages (doors were kicked in, holes in the wall, and the house wasn't professionally cleaned yet.) Our mistake was moving in despite the damages because we needed a place to put our things since we needed to go home for the summer. Our landlord promised the repairs to be finished in a week, but it has now been a month and a half and there are still repairs to be done. It has been such an inconvenience. The apartment is currently unoccupied since we are away and are only using the house during school. We have only visited for one weekend to move a few boxes and we took a few showers and used the stove very little to cook food. Now, I have received a utilities bill for about $100 and this is beyond outstanding for a home that isn't being used even though we stayed for a weekend it wouldn't amount to this much! My concern is then that the repairmen are using the electricity to do their repairs; it seems the only logical answer for why the bill would be so high. When I brought this up to my landlord, she said she will not pay for any of the bill and it is our responsibility as stated in our lease. However, we had mentioned to her beforehand that we did not want to open a utilities account until we will fully occupy the house in late August but the lease stated that there must be no shut off period or else the landlord can fine us. We questioned (verbally nothing written out unfortunately)that what if the repairs take up a lot of electricity and she said if it was outstanding to tell her and that is what we are doing now but she claims she never said that
So now we're stuck and I feel we are being taken advantaged of since we are only students, and I have never experienced a problem like this before. What can we do? Should we take her to court?