All Forum Posts by: Andrew Dincola

@Andrew Dincola you can't put a clause in your lease that says "I understand I am renting a bedroom without egress". Contract law prohibits you from putting clauses in your lease that violate someone's rights under law. If that was legal, every landlord would just have a clause that said "I can evict you at any time for any reason with any amount of notice and you can never sue me." I am being absurd intentionally to prove a point. Also be aware, you should never modify a lease without an attorney reviewing the changes.

I am not sure about morality. Would you feel guilty if someone died in the basement when there was a fire because they couldn't get out? 

This is more an issue of safety and liability. If you know someone is occupying that as a bedroom, you become liable if they are hurt or killed due to lack of egress. Your insurance company will not offer you liability protection in that situation. They will cover the cost of property repair, but not the wrongful death lawsuit. 

Your liability is increased further because there is a public post where Andrew Dincola is asking if egress is needed. You know it is required, so this seems to be more about you trying to cheat the rules. I think that is what Greg took issue with. The fact that you aren't willing to follow rules is a disaster in business.

Fires happen all the time. My landlord friend had one a few months ago and the basement occupant barely made it out. I have had three fires and thankfully nobody was hurt. 

The simple solution is YOU sleep in the non-legal bedroom. I wouldn't personally recommend that, but taking chances with your own life is your choice.

@Andrew Dincola Chicago requires a window, a door that doesn't lead into another bedroom when you exit, heat and a closet for it to be called a room. The window has to be a minimum size depending on the room and the actual room has to be a certain size to be called a room. If you invite people to live there just know the risks. We do bunch of crazy driving decisions in our daily driving and we still come home alive.

Just use the space for another purpose. Storage, rec area, gym, etc. It's not worth messing with the exterior appearance of the house. Maybe you can do value add to make higher rents for the usable units. No need to discuss this with attorneys, an area without required egress is not allowed to be used as a bedroom almost anywhere in the USA. I imagine it's in the IBC (international building code) that most jurisdictions adopt.

That sounds like a lot of work to add the egress however depending on pricing it may work out.  Without it I wouldn't rent it as a bedroom but that doesn't mean you can't rent it out.  More people are working from home than ever before, have you considered designating it as a separate office space and renting it to one of your tenants.  People don't want to work in the same room they sleep and you may have luck renting it as a 1 bedroom with a separate office.  The pool of renters may be smaller but so would the number of rentals to choose from helping you stand out and hopefully decreasing vacancy.  This could be an issue with current tenants though if they rented their room assuming they would have access to the space.  Many renters also pay for storage space so that is another option that may work out as well.