The strangest apartment I had ever had, was the one where I shared a heating system with my neighbor.
Sharing a heating system was fine, if it meant we just shared the bill for the HVAC system.
What sharing to the landlord meant was that he had the thermostat in his side of the building, and I had to live with the temperatures he set. I asked my dad if that was legal, and he shrugged. He said he had never come across that problem before. I called a lawyer and told him about the HVAC system. He told me that if I signed the rental agreement and it was written in the agreement, it was legal. I went all through my rental agreement, and there was nothing in there about the HVAC system. It just stated it was a shared HVAC system, and I was responsible for half the heating and air conditioning bills. There was nothing about having only one thermostat, and the owner of the building regulated the heat. I had to take the rental agreement to the lawyer, and he called the owner of the building. He bluntly said that if I didn’t like the agreement, I could cancel, but I would need to pay for the entire first and last month because he would need to find another tenant for the bottom apartment. The lawyer looked at me and said he would fight it while my dad told me I was going to lose money. All of my heat would be going upstairs, and I would be paying for HVAC while having little heat.