Yard Share Change. Rent Reduction?

[MattyK]

Hi,

I live in a ground floor apartment and I have a yard. When we moved in the only access to the yard was through the window. We offered to pay an additional $50/month for them to replace the window with a door.

While technically we were told that the yard was shared we were assured by the realtor that we would have exclusive use of the yard since a) the current tenant never went out there and b) the apartment next to us has no door and all types of ventilation ducts and such below the window which makes it nearly impossible to go out through the window. We would not have taken the apartment had we not been assured that we would be the only one using it and we certainly wouldn't have paid the additional $50/month and dumped nearly $600 of our own money into landscaping a shared yard.

Well, the previous tenant moved out and now they're renovating and adding an elevated door which goes over said obstacles. This means we will, after only 4 months, have to share the yard.

For the record, there is nothing in writing regarding yard use. However, do you think this is grounds for rent reduction? We're losing half our yard and paying extra for a door we would not have agreed to put in had we known this would happen. Additionally, we spent a ton of time & money fixing the yard up. How much should I be able to knock off, if any?

***Forgot to mention that the work looks shoddy. Pretty sure there's no building permit for the door. Is there a city department I check to see if a building permit was issued?

[lofter1]

To check on the permit for work go to www.nyc.gov and then to the Department of Buildings webpage. Enter the address for the property. On the property page go down to the bottom and click Jobs / Filings. That will link you to a page where a a list of Jobs will be displayed. Check there for the status of the work you describe.