I’ll try to keep this brief. Our lease ends at the end of this month, APRIL. my wife and I have not signed anything to renew any lease whatsoever. We submitted our notice on April 3rd and our last will be May 31st.
They are telling me that per our “contract” that we have to pay for the full month of JUNE as well. Even though our actual contract ends April 30th. And we are doing a month to month for May (this is what happens when you don’t sign or renew the lease) So we have not signed a new contract or agreed to anything, we gave a move out notice, and they’re telling us no.
I also have all documents and “receipts” to back up this claim.
I’m just here to tell you that anybody that says to talk to a lawyer is a jackass and is talking out their ass.
You do not deal with these matters in regular civil court, these are handled directly through whatever tenany board is in your region. Start by contacting them and ignore all the other nonsense about contacting attorneys, it’s a waste of time because all the attorney will tell you to do is to contact the tenancy board.
Assuming you have a tenancy board. In the United States, many locations do not.
For legal questions you need to specify jurisdiction the answer may depend vastly. Typically, you may have a notice period to do when leaving and the lease would renew automatically if nobody denounce it.
But again detail would depend on your specif jurisdiction, if not done yet, join your local tenant union
A legal question without the information where in the world you live (country, state, province) cannot possibly get reliable answers.
IANAL. Also IDKWYL (I don’t know wher you live), but in the sane Western world (the EU), there’s no need for a notice in your case - usually it’s a good idea to check with the landlords/tenants wether they plan on renewing the lease or not so you both know where the other side is standing.
And, of course, since the contract is time-bound, the assumption is that both possibilities (renewal and no renewal) are on the table, and neither require any side to go out of their way to announce their intent on what happens after the contract expires.
The ‘default’ option is no renewal - otherwise there is no meaning in making it time-bound and burdening the parties with the need to re-establish a new agreement each contract term. So the need to give a notice of “I plan to do xy after the contract” makes no sense, let alone it carrying contractual punishments.
You weren’t required to give a notice. Even if the contract stated so, that clause would most likely get nullified, which I sincerely doubt (again, in most of Europe), since it disproportionally and predatorily benefits one party.
And again, IANAL. You should get one.
But, were I your lawyer (which I most definitely am not), I would scold you for writing the notice in the firdt place since it puts you in a submissive position (your landlord can now claim that by giving notice you “showed” that you “think” you “owe” the landlord notice, ergo you owe them money for the 2 days in May (assuming a 30-day notice), which they conveniently round up to an entire month. I sincerely hope you didn’t include explicit (and unnecessary) wording along the lines of THIS IS A 30-DAY NOTICE AS PER $WHATEVER ANNOUNCING OUR INTENTION TO MOVE OUT BY DATE.
Of course, this statement makes no sense. The contract meets its natural end by the date given and that’s it. No notices, no payments, no apartment rented out. A renewal requires the good-will of both parties.
My IANAL advice for you going forward is: Stick to the German philosophy - keep things as brief as possible to give the “enemy” less ammo on the one, and to deal with any edge-cases that don’t go in your favour.
It’s a delicate balance. A fine art, even - the art of writing contracts. And it’s hard.
A good contract leaves no room for large gaps in interpretation (loopholes), but allows some flexibility. It also keeps the parties on equal footing (neither subjegated to the others) is in itself a work of fine art.
Bad contracts are (or should be) treated as insults. Shuld the insult be bad enough, ripping the piece of paper conveying the contract out of protest. (Remember - the contract is not the piece of paper, but the words on it and an oral agreement is just as valid as a written contract, but harder to prove - sometimes the legislature decides to nullify all oral contracts for specific “high-impact” things like home sale, but that’s another can of worms).
Going forward, do not be afraid to reject contracts and call for a middle ground (suggest amendments) which protect your rights and interests. Not doing it is a terrible idea - the only thing you have to “lose” in such a case is all the obligations that weigh you down from the bad contract.
Germans would actually, I assure you, find it insulting if you just accepted the initial proposal of a contract if it isn’t a fixed template given by the Minstries (in that case not amending is acceptable since they strike a good balance, but amending is by no means impossible - these templates are, after all, mere suggestions meant to be acceptable for the majority of uses/circumstances).
Just want to say to consult a lawyer because I’m not one. Don’t listen to anyone here, me included. Speak to a real lawyer lol. But here is my take:
Just leave on May 31st. What will happen is the landlord will simply steal your security deposit and claim that you didn’t give enough notice. We were also on a month to month lease. You are not under a contract through June and shouldn’t be obligated to pay June. This is what these pieces of shit always do. You can either get a lawyer or eat the deposit. Literally the same thing happened to us 5 years ago when we moved out of our apartment during covid to buy a house. I gave that fucking cocksucker like 2 months notice. He stole my deposit and claimed I gave him a week’s notice. He also claimed we ruined the kitchen which was 100% absolutely false. We cleaned so well before leaving. I ate the deposit because i didn’t want to go to small claims court when covid was at its peak. The fuck called my bluff because i threatened to get a lawyer and I said i would follow a suit. He must have banked on me not following through for that amount of money - he was right. Welcome to renting!
NAL, but always sue, and sue for more than you are owed. Court is a negotiation and judges do not take kindly to landlords trying to pull a fast one and landing in their court.
I have done this myself to a scammy corporate landlord and they settled out of court after a barrage of threatening letters, subsequent “you sued the wrong party”, and “we’re willing to drop what we were going to charge you if you drop this case” letters. I ended up about $400 up including court costs for filing and serving, just for ignoring letters.
Private landlords, who I’ve also sued, are much more naively willing to go in front of a judge. If you have any case at all, the judge is likely to eat the landlord alive- unless you are a deadbeat tenant you will walk out of court probably with 3x damages.
Reiterating what others have said about talking to an attorney. Most will consult with you for free and you’ll know if you have a case.
Anecdote: my brother is an attorney and I got really sick, spent a month hospitalized and when I got out had to move back to my parents house because I needed help day to day while I got better.
My brother broke my lease on my apartment using ADA rules (I’m in the US) but they tried to keep my deposit for normal wear and tear items.
All it took was a letter to the corporate office on his firm’s legal letterhead, with the relevant statutes that said they couldn’t keep my deposit for the items they listed, and a reminder that if we sued and won they’d owe me double in damages plus all costs and his fee.
Idk what state your in but landlords withholding deposits usually results in triple damages (eg. You get three times your deposit in damages if the court finds in your favor).
Not my state. Here you’re entitled to return of the deposit plus damages up to the amount of the deposit (so double, basically).
It would be helpful if have specified the country but since you didn’t, I presume that you are a USian?
Yeah, because in Germany it’s normal to require 3 months’ notice.
Doesn’t this kind of depend on where you live? Lol
How much time does your contract say is required for giving notice?
60 days. Which I gave
They can get an extra day from you to make it 60
But they can’t force you to pay entire month GENERALLY
Practically they withhold your deposit and tell you to get fucked.
You will need to take them to a small claims court and ezain the situation to a judge in plain English. Depending on your state, you have a decent chance of recovery since your land lord over played its hand
With that being said you need to check the contract this specifically… Does it have a rounding up provision ie well its. June 1 so you pay entire month. Enforcing that is state dependent. Red states would side with ll, while blue states will generally side with tenant.
Obviously don’t take legal advise from an online shit poster, get a proper consult.
Do your math again. 4/3 to 5/31 is less than 60 days.
But also you’ll want to go through the rental agreement and your local laws to see if they can force this on you. You may just default to a month-to-month, but you may not.
You gave notice on April 3rd. I count 59 days. They’re being dicks, but it’s not 60.
I hate off by one errors
This is just small claims court. You can just leave and not pay for a month you aren’t there, I wouldn’t expect the security deposit back though.
Move out first, then if you don’t get the security deposit back, try small claims court. You have to decide if the deposit is worth the fight though. It’s around $250 to file and serve your landlord. Assuming you win, there’s no enforcement of them paying you. You would need to then take that order to another judge and likely provide details on how to get that money back to get an order that should eventually get that money back.
Unless there are some lawyers here, the best advice would be “talk to a lawyer.”
Sorry to be Mr Hindsight here, but please join a renters’ association yesterday. If they’re anywhere near as good and cheap as was my experience, it’s money extremely well spent.
No clue what that is, so I shall Google for info. Thank you
My translation was a little off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenants_union
In my experience it’s much less grassroots than the article makes it sound: these are well established organisations, they have specialised lawyers on the payroll, and for a yearly fee you get the right to consult them in cases like this one. And when the case is clear enough they will get active on your behalf.
Again, I hope something like that is an option where you live.
I don’t know where you live, but where I live you have to give 60 days’ notice to end a month-to-month tenancy.
If this is the case where you live too, they knew this was the case and are probably intentionally are trying to trap you for 60 more days. You may not actually have the right to end your tenancy at the end of May.
In some states, after a year lease is fulfilled, if no future negotiations are made, the lease becomes a month-to-month contract.
Even still, not only is there no way that you have to pay for May or June without having signed anything, you very likely provided them with some kind of sign on collateral like most lease deals require, like first and last month’s rent, plus security deposit, something like that. That should all be coming back to you.
What does your contract say?
