In the summer of my wife and I were looking for a cheap apartment or house close to downtown Colorado Springs. We found a great deal on Craig's list where we could help fix up an old building for cheaper rent at 501 East Kiowa on the Corona St. Side of the building. It was the best deal going and we took it. Neighbors warned us about the owner, but we were out of time so we agreed to put in 90 hours for minimum wage off of our rent over 3 months. Everything was great until we told the guy we had put in more than 90 hours and would keep working for cheap rent if he wrote something up. He told us we had 2 days to move out, but I knew he couldn't do that. He repeatedly threatened us with eviction, but we payed our rent so he couldn't do it. It took him a while, but he finally got rid of us by not paying the commonly metered utilities until they got shut off and the city condemned the building. We had to move and sued Randy Sigley, a.K.A. Randolph A. Sigley and Front Range Management in small claims court. He got a lawyer to threaten us with a frivolous lawsuit case if we proceeded, claiming that he doesn't own the building. We went to court anyway and he showed up with a 14 year old carbon copy of a trade name affidavit that he said proves his ex-wife owns the building and that he is a part time employee and filed a counterclaim of the maximum $7,500, swearing under oath that he isn't the owner. The judge gave us a 30 day continuance to try to find out who owns the place and we found out that week that he has a mortgage on the building in his name. We're looking forward to our next court date. Do not rent from this man. He has illegally locked families out of their units, and illegaly turned off gas and water and removed electric meters so they didn't have electric. I have seen these things with my own eyes. I knew it was bad when a process server showed up and he took off running through an alley while I was holding up a board for him to screw into a fencepost. I wish we had done a lot more research than we did and we will NEVER sign a lease without finding out all we can about the property owner again. Learn from our mistakes, please!
0 comments