Well, it looks like the landlord is definitely going to be breaking the lease, so now it is time to do one of a few things. First thing is, I have to keep up with the bills until I am legally evicted through the courts, because only then can I be clearly NOT breaking my end of the lease agreement. Second, of course, now that the city has come and put a stop work order on the building, and now that they have issued him violations which he has to appear to answer, there is a lot of speculation as to what he is going to do with that property.
So if it is possible, and if the guy has a few brain cells left, he will chose to sell the building. He was asking for way too much money, knowing now what the building is worth, and what needs to be done to make it operational again. I have spoken to a couple different architects and contractors and within the next couple weeks I will be getting a few estimates as to the cost of remodeling the property. When I figure out the remodel cost, and add that to the equipment cost, and deduct that from what I can afford to get a mortgage for, I will have my friend (who doesn't know me) make the guy a low-ball offer to buy the property, as is. That way, I can buy it back from him! I can get a mortgage on my own, or through the SBA, and take the money it will take to remodel, plus the sale price, plus the cost of equipment and beginning working capital and just pay that amount rather than paying rent to someone who isn't going to be looking out for the building in the first place. I will probably have to pay the city penalties now, if I buy the building and have to get permits for the work that needs to be done on the remodel. But it will not be as much as if I were to pay this guy rent for the next 2-6 years before I pay his exhorbinant purchase price and so I think this is the more economical way in the long run.
Figuring on paying what I was planning on paying in rent to cover the mortgage, I will have the building and equipment and remodel and stuff all paid off within 10 years! And I will own the building and the property outright! This guy made such a miserable choice to buy this building in the first place, as he wasn't a restaurant guy, then he left it go to crap and get shut down by the health department, and then he left it deteriorate over the past few years as a vacant building. Now, he has to get out of the lease agreement he made with me, take a loss from the sale of the building and walk away. Hopefully he will do just that and take a low offer or negotiate more reasonably now that he sees what more he has to do (and pay) to make the building operational again. *crosses fingers*
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
NOTHIN'
I sent my letter to the landlord, telling him that he has 30 days to cure the problems he has in his building or to make an effort to start on the repairs. I am still waiting for the inspectors to come out to issue violation notices.
He has called me asking to come to look at the amount of work his "contractors" did so he could pay them, and each of the three days in a row that I have told him I was going to be there, he never showed. The last time I told him I would be there at 5:30 pm, and he was 2 cars in front of me, and drove right by as I was pulling up to the restaurant at 5:25 pm. Then I called him 10 minutes later, and he said he was there but I wasn't. He is so full of shit.
He has no intention of honoring the lease agreement we have. I spoke with my lawyers who told me that I have a pretty good chance of winning my case in court if I sue him for my losses. And I intend on doing that. He will have to evict me at this point. And he probably will. And I will withhold rent until he does. And in court we will have our day. And unfortunately, for him, he is liable to me for actual damages, consequential damages, and potential loss of profits. And since I had a 2 year lease, with two-2 year options beyond that, he is risking losing a lot more than it would have taken him to remodel his property.
He will have fun defending himself in court, and I will have fun should the building inspectors find his building condemnable. It will be even more fun should he lose his building to the city due to their exercising eminent domain, and then me buying the place and fixing it up right. But I won't pay what the guy was asking for it. I will pay like less than half.
Wishful thinking. I doubt it will turn out that way. The guy will pay his fines, and patch his walls and rent the place to some other person, without knowing what they are getting into.
And in the meantime, I am out for a year, which is about how long the lawyers say it will take for us to get to court and trial. Eh, yet again, I'll find a place. It may take a while, to recover from the loss of this, but I will find a place. Florida is so much easier, licensing wise. But there is this one lot, I have been looking at for years, and I ask every year at least once, for the lease, but so far have been denied. It's right across the street from this HUGE park. How nice that would be!
He has called me asking to come to look at the amount of work his "contractors" did so he could pay them, and each of the three days in a row that I have told him I was going to be there, he never showed. The last time I told him I would be there at 5:30 pm, and he was 2 cars in front of me, and drove right by as I was pulling up to the restaurant at 5:25 pm. Then I called him 10 minutes later, and he said he was there but I wasn't. He is so full of shit.
He has no intention of honoring the lease agreement we have. I spoke with my lawyers who told me that I have a pretty good chance of winning my case in court if I sue him for my losses. And I intend on doing that. He will have to evict me at this point. And he probably will. And I will withhold rent until he does. And in court we will have our day. And unfortunately, for him, he is liable to me for actual damages, consequential damages, and potential loss of profits. And since I had a 2 year lease, with two-2 year options beyond that, he is risking losing a lot more than it would have taken him to remodel his property.
He will have fun defending himself in court, and I will have fun should the building inspectors find his building condemnable. It will be even more fun should he lose his building to the city due to their exercising eminent domain, and then me buying the place and fixing it up right. But I won't pay what the guy was asking for it. I will pay like less than half.
Wishful thinking. I doubt it will turn out that way. The guy will pay his fines, and patch his walls and rent the place to some other person, without knowing what they are getting into.
And in the meantime, I am out for a year, which is about how long the lawyers say it will take for us to get to court and trial. Eh, yet again, I'll find a place. It may take a while, to recover from the loss of this, but I will find a place. Florida is so much easier, licensing wise. But there is this one lot, I have been looking at for years, and I ask every year at least once, for the lease, but so far have been denied. It's right across the street from this HUGE park. How nice that would be!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
DEATH OF DREAMS
Since I was a little kid, I have dreamed of doing this. I wanted to have my own little restaurant, something that I could get up in the morning, go to make food, serve people and interact with them, and come home at night with a sense of having made people happy. There was nothing in that dream about making them sick, or making myself sick by going to work every day. But when I signed this lease, I made sure that I would be protected by making sure the language of the lease was such that the Landlord would not be able to stick me with the responsibility of caring for his negligence or building repairs or replacing major systems.
Well, as you may have read over the past few posts, there have been some major hiccups along the lines with the building and the building systems, more currently and more substantially, with moldy rotten wood within the walls. And there is no way that I am sacrificing my name or reputation by allowing him to cut corners in the clean up or restoration of his building at the expense of the health of myself (who would be breathing the mold spores for 14 hours a day) or the health of the public who I would be serving every day!
He has tried to cover up the problem without benefit of building inspectors over the past couple weeks since I signed the lease to correct his building systems, but when he sacrifices the public safety issue, I have to draw the line. I can't take the responsibility for his shoddy workmanship. And it will be my name on the sign, and on the building, regardless of who owns the building, I have to take responsibility for my knowledge of what is going on. And today, I did just that. I took responsibility, and called the city to have the building inspectors come and look at the work he is allowing to be done without benefit of permits, or inspections to make the building up to code.
He has time to remedy the building, if the building inspectors don't just come out and condemn the building all together. But if he does remedy the building to code, I will still hope to hold on to the restaurant. If he would rather get out of the lease at this point, he will be responsible for every penny I have already invested into this place, and he will definitely be held accountable for his misrepresentations and actions to breach this lease.
I cried for the loss of my dream, and my mom and my brothers and sisters my friends all comforted me during this time of loss. Financially, the $7,000 - $15,000 is nothing compared to the dream this guy promised me, and killed. The work I have been putting into making this place a successful venture, and the hopes and dreams now shattered; it's just sad.
I'll find another place. Soon.
Well, as you may have read over the past few posts, there have been some major hiccups along the lines with the building and the building systems, more currently and more substantially, with moldy rotten wood within the walls. And there is no way that I am sacrificing my name or reputation by allowing him to cut corners in the clean up or restoration of his building at the expense of the health of myself (who would be breathing the mold spores for 14 hours a day) or the health of the public who I would be serving every day!
He has tried to cover up the problem without benefit of building inspectors over the past couple weeks since I signed the lease to correct his building systems, but when he sacrifices the public safety issue, I have to draw the line. I can't take the responsibility for his shoddy workmanship. And it will be my name on the sign, and on the building, regardless of who owns the building, I have to take responsibility for my knowledge of what is going on. And today, I did just that. I took responsibility, and called the city to have the building inspectors come and look at the work he is allowing to be done without benefit of permits, or inspections to make the building up to code.
He has time to remedy the building, if the building inspectors don't just come out and condemn the building all together. But if he does remedy the building to code, I will still hope to hold on to the restaurant. If he would rather get out of the lease at this point, he will be responsible for every penny I have already invested into this place, and he will definitely be held accountable for his misrepresentations and actions to breach this lease.
I cried for the loss of my dream, and my mom and my brothers and sisters my friends all comforted me during this time of loss. Financially, the $7,000 - $15,000 is nothing compared to the dream this guy promised me, and killed. The work I have been putting into making this place a successful venture, and the hopes and dreams now shattered; it's just sad.
I'll find another place. Soon.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
LANDLORDS! GAH!!!
Every wall, every floor board, every leaky pipe, all of this crap is his responsibility. Every system which is in disrepair, and all of it is his responsibility. Why does he think I AM COSTING HIM MONEY? It's HIS building! It's his stupidity to leave the water pipes full of water in the winter, and so they busted when the pipes froze, and now there is water leaks in all the plumbing, and it's his stupidity to leave the roof leak long enough to rot out the joists, and the drywall, and the insulation. All of this is his responsibility! And I am not going to be doing this work for him or HIS BUILDING! He needs to step up and realize that it is still his building.
All this work, and we're already into week 2. Today, I had a couple laborers helping me move some equipment from one area in the kitchen to the dry storage area. Well, I have all these tools in the dry storage area. So this other guy is walking by and asks for some work, so I was like, "Sure, come help out." Then I am on my way to go get some cleaning supplies, and the one guy I had working with me, tells me that this guy stole one of my tools which was like $40 but he wanted to take it to scrap it, and get some money for it. A $40 tool, but still, the guy chucked it over the fence so I wouldn't find it, and he could come back later and take it! So I walk up to him, hand him $10 and tell him, "That is for the one hour you worked, I don't need you anymore today." Now he is all pissed cos the other guys are still working with me, and he was like, "Wait, I thought you needed me for a few hours, and you were going to pay me more," I pulled the tool out that he chucked behind the fence, and said, "THIS IS THE REASON YOU AREN'T STAYING, NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE AND HAVE YOU ARRESTED!" What it was that he tried to steal was a bolt cutter, but I wanted to say get the hell out before I cut your fucking balls off with this bolt cutter! But I was really restraining my anger.
I don't have all the money in the world to start this business. I want things done right, and I want to work a fair day for a fair wage, and I try to extend courtesy to people who wanted to help out, by giving them a job, and this is the thanks I get? I didn't deserve that crap. I just bought that thing, like a week ago. And this guy is going to steal it from me? In a week, I have managed to spend an average of a thousand dollars a day! That is a lot. Now I just bought floor tile, new fixtures for the entire place, a new toilet, and some cement and concrete repair stuff, for the foundation cracks in the dry storage building. And it cost me like close to $1400. That's a lot of money to be spending on some place I am only renting, but it is worth getting the stuff done right! I don't want to put cheap workmanship or materials into a place that I plan on being in for the next 6 years, or more.
So I have the right people working with me, people who I can trust. My brother is a plumber and an electrician. And he is helping me out with the electrical work and the plumbing stuff he can help with. He is also helping me lay tile in the restaurant and installing all my lighting fixtures and plumbing stuff. But he offered my landlord to work on the water leaks, repairing and stuff for $30 an hour. Which is like 1/3 of what any other good plumber would offer to do the work for. But since it was for my restaurant, he wasn't going to screw him over on the workmanship. So this guy, the landlord, decides to ask his friend to do it for him. I asked his friend how much he was charging him to do this, he said $80 an hour. The guy was there for 8 hours finding and fixing all the leaks. And I AM COSTING HIM MONEY???
My landlord asked some carpenter friend of his now to fix walls, which were damaged by the roof leak, insulating them and paneling the walls. I got another friend of my brother's who he works with doing the same thing. The guy said it would be like a good week's worth of work, and will probably ballpark the cost of the materials and labor at $4,000. My landlord says he is crazy, but my landlord also doesn't want to address all the walls that are water-damaged. He only wants to skate by with the minimum so he can slide under the radar for the inspections. But if these inspectors come out to check the stuff, they are going to fine him for first not having the building up to code, and second, for doing ANY work without the right permits from the city.
So this guy doesn't want to spend any money on his building and wants me to take on the responsibility of making his building work for him. This was EXACTLY what took a month to write and fight over in the lease. He wanted nothing to do with the repairs to this building, so it would have cost me about $15,000 to get all this stuff done right instead of him having to pay for his crap workmanship. The equipment he had in the restaurant to start with, was JUNKED because his son who was managing the place, left it go to crap! It was all covered in GREASE for the 5 years the place was closed, the entire place was a home to the neighborhood rat population. And when I clipped the lock on the gangway between the buildings, I see stockpiles of GARBAGE loaded up in the gangway! NO WONDER THE GUY WAS SHUT DOWN BY THE CITY! The place was literally A DUMP!
I am crying right now, because of the undaunted task of getting this place to code. And to get it done right, is difficult for me to do when the LANDLORD won't do it right! I am not going to die of mold spores in my kitchen walls, and I am not going to make my customers sick from it either!
All this work, and we're already into week 2. Today, I had a couple laborers helping me move some equipment from one area in the kitchen to the dry storage area. Well, I have all these tools in the dry storage area. So this other guy is walking by and asks for some work, so I was like, "Sure, come help out." Then I am on my way to go get some cleaning supplies, and the one guy I had working with me, tells me that this guy stole one of my tools which was like $40 but he wanted to take it to scrap it, and get some money for it. A $40 tool, but still, the guy chucked it over the fence so I wouldn't find it, and he could come back later and take it! So I walk up to him, hand him $10 and tell him, "That is for the one hour you worked, I don't need you anymore today." Now he is all pissed cos the other guys are still working with me, and he was like, "Wait, I thought you needed me for a few hours, and you were going to pay me more," I pulled the tool out that he chucked behind the fence, and said, "THIS IS THE REASON YOU AREN'T STAYING, NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE AND HAVE YOU ARRESTED!" What it was that he tried to steal was a bolt cutter, but I wanted to say get the hell out before I cut your fucking balls off with this bolt cutter! But I was really restraining my anger.
I don't have all the money in the world to start this business. I want things done right, and I want to work a fair day for a fair wage, and I try to extend courtesy to people who wanted to help out, by giving them a job, and this is the thanks I get? I didn't deserve that crap. I just bought that thing, like a week ago. And this guy is going to steal it from me? In a week, I have managed to spend an average of a thousand dollars a day! That is a lot. Now I just bought floor tile, new fixtures for the entire place, a new toilet, and some cement and concrete repair stuff, for the foundation cracks in the dry storage building. And it cost me like close to $1400. That's a lot of money to be spending on some place I am only renting, but it is worth getting the stuff done right! I don't want to put cheap workmanship or materials into a place that I plan on being in for the next 6 years, or more.
So I have the right people working with me, people who I can trust. My brother is a plumber and an electrician. And he is helping me out with the electrical work and the plumbing stuff he can help with. He is also helping me lay tile in the restaurant and installing all my lighting fixtures and plumbing stuff. But he offered my landlord to work on the water leaks, repairing and stuff for $30 an hour. Which is like 1/3 of what any other good plumber would offer to do the work for. But since it was for my restaurant, he wasn't going to screw him over on the workmanship. So this guy, the landlord, decides to ask his friend to do it for him. I asked his friend how much he was charging him to do this, he said $80 an hour. The guy was there for 8 hours finding and fixing all the leaks. And I AM COSTING HIM MONEY???
My landlord asked some carpenter friend of his now to fix walls, which were damaged by the roof leak, insulating them and paneling the walls. I got another friend of my brother's who he works with doing the same thing. The guy said it would be like a good week's worth of work, and will probably ballpark the cost of the materials and labor at $4,000. My landlord says he is crazy, but my landlord also doesn't want to address all the walls that are water-damaged. He only wants to skate by with the minimum so he can slide under the radar for the inspections. But if these inspectors come out to check the stuff, they are going to fine him for first not having the building up to code, and second, for doing ANY work without the right permits from the city.
So this guy doesn't want to spend any money on his building and wants me to take on the responsibility of making his building work for him. This was EXACTLY what took a month to write and fight over in the lease. He wanted nothing to do with the repairs to this building, so it would have cost me about $15,000 to get all this stuff done right instead of him having to pay for his crap workmanship. The equipment he had in the restaurant to start with, was JUNKED because his son who was managing the place, left it go to crap! It was all covered in GREASE for the 5 years the place was closed, the entire place was a home to the neighborhood rat population. And when I clipped the lock on the gangway between the buildings, I see stockpiles of GARBAGE loaded up in the gangway! NO WONDER THE GUY WAS SHUT DOWN BY THE CITY! The place was literally A DUMP!
I am crying right now, because of the undaunted task of getting this place to code. And to get it done right, is difficult for me to do when the LANDLORD won't do it right! I am not going to die of mold spores in my kitchen walls, and I am not going to make my customers sick from it either!
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