Code Violation

[turbo]

I own a mix use building. It's 2 stories building. On the top has hotel. The bottom has 5 warehouses. Two of my warehouse rent out to bedding company on the 1st floor. Bedding company has been good long term customer. One day the fire department came by and give the bedding company couple of code violation. One of them is something to do with the missing drywall on the ceiling of the bedding company unit. My question is who is responsible to fix this ? Me as a landlord or bedding company as a tenant have to pay for it ?

[JakeRodgers]

Depends- how is the lease structured?

[BizTexts]

Depends on the lease is correct, however is it worth a good relationship over drywall?

[davewindsor]

Depends on the lease is correct, however is it worth a good relationship over drywall?

Whether it would be good to ruin a relationship over would depend on how much drywall we're talking about here.  Don't even think about relationships when it comes to this stuff.

It's one thing if it's a 2x2 piece of drywall and I doubt he'd be asking if it was.  If it's the whole ceiling of the warehouse, don't even think about good relationships.  The landlord could be running into some serious coin.  Fire rated drywall is heavy as sin, so you need to hire a crew of two people to hold it up while you screw it in.  Then, there's the issue of the bedding company inventory.  You start sanding the compound and there will be dust flying all over the place.  So all the bedding inventory will have to be moved and the tenant might come after you for lost days of business and hiring people to move it out once you start being the nice guy.  I had that happen to me before after a fire marshall came because some idiot upstairs fell while he was drunk and his buddy called 911.  Fire marshall went through the whole building afterwards because my tenant wasted their time and gave me 10 grand worth of violations.  There was painted wood panelling on the ceiling of the clothing store on the main floor.  I got quotes and the ceiling had to be lowered with studs and new fire rated drywall had to be added and sanded.  Total pain in the ***. 

I settled with the tenant for a free month's of rent and she had her relatives put it up themselves.  She tried to squeeze me for more for lost business, but I wouldn't budge.  Her rent was less than half of what the newer building across the street charged for the same size.  Looking back, it would probably have been better to install suspended ceiling tile.   Sprinkler heads are another way around it.   But, forget that.  Give em a free month's of rent as a goodwill gesture and the rest they can pay themselves.  This issue wasn't written in the lease, but I reminded them that this is not a residential tenancy and if they want to move, they can go right ahead because it's a commercial tenancy.  They're already established in that location.  They're not gonna move anywhere.  Believe me.  And, I doubt they'd win if they took you to court unless it's specifically written in the lease.