On November 15, our family entered into a Commercial Lease Agreement with Elliott & Company Realtors to open a small business. Section 3 of our lease agreement states the leasee shall use and occupy the premises for business purposes. The premises shall be used for no other purpose. Lessor represents that the premises may lawfully be used for such purpose.
Shortly after opening we learned from the local code enforcement that the property was not up to commercial code and we were illegally running a business from that location and that we would be subject to fines and shut down if the situation was not rectified. We informed Elliott & Company of the issues and were told that the situation would be remedied. After several months of dragging their feet and stringing the city authorities along, the city finally informed us that they would have a hearing and that we would be put out of business if the property was not up to code by the time the hearing came around. Again, we informed Elliott & Company and again we were told it would be remedied, a few days later an engineer that had been contracted by Elliott & Company to draw up the site plans for the location stopped by and informed us that he was only contracted to do the plans for the outside portion of the property and that even if that was done there would still need to be alterations done to the building. Elliott & Company knew this ahead of time and we feel that this was another attempt to string the city along without doing with regards to total compliance to city code ordinances.
Two days before the hearing we were told by Elliott & Company's representative that they would not do anything to improve the property and they obtained a 90 day extention and in 90 days the city would put us out of business.
During our term of occupancy at the location we continued to pay rent at $1400 a month and had invested several thousand dollars into the property, to be told that we would be out of business this way was a tremendous blow to our family and our finances.
Knowing that the repairs will not be done we offered to move locations as long as Elliott & Company would pay our relocation costs and difference in rent for the remainder of our lease. This would cost Elliott & Company approximately $20,000 yet they declined.
We have since relocated at our own expense which has caused our family great hardship and Elliott & Company has refused to compensate us for our investment essentially saying we made a mistake but you are paying for it. Because of the moving expenses we can't afford to hire an attorney to file a lawsuit against them.
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