Landlord won't renew lease
Me and my significant other have been the ideal tenants for the past year. We always pay the rent on time and only contact our landlord when the heat isn’t on and it’s freezing cold outside. Our lease is up at the end of March and we want to renew it. We received a letter…
Me and my significant other have been the ideal tenants for the past year. We always pay the rent on time and only contact our landlord when the heat isn’t on and it’s freezing cold outside. Our lease is up at the end of March and we want to renew it. We received a letter from our landlord saying she is not interested in renewing the lease with us. When we called to ask why, she refused to discuss it. Now we have 30 days to find a new place. Is this legal?
I have to agree with 10:56 i am a landlord too and while i don’t think you have much recourse i think its a pretty nasty thing to do to a good tenant. You should at least try to call them up and ask for an extra 30 days for you to find a new place. Maybe in the future make sure that any lease you sign includes a larger time frame for notice to leave (like 60 days instead of the usual 30). Sorry.
I guess the truth hurts.
Exactly. The level of arrogance is incredible. Whatever happened to old-fashioned treating your fellow humans right? Even in business transactions, you need to treat people courteously. I am a landlord and I would never treat a good tenant this way, assuming the facts are as stated.
That said, unfortunately the advice given is correct.
go to tenant net for advice..folks here are not tenant oriented..
Maybe you do not understand how renting works. Your landlord owns the building. Their only obligations are specified in the lease. When the lease expires, they have no further obligation to you. You are a tenant. Your only rights are specified in the lease. When the lease expires, you become a month to month tenant and are subject to eviction. Don’t like the law? Buy your own house. You have the flexibility to move whenever you want, you don’t pay property taxes, you don’t pay for the heat and maintenance. Is it unfair? I guess it depends.
Oops sorry Putnam Denizen – I only skimmed your comment and didn’t read the whole thing.
Apologies.
I think Putnam Denizen’s advice is horrible.
You have the right to legal process, but they also have the right to raise the rent to $10,000 per month if they want. And they also have the right to legal process to collect any unpaid rent if you don’t vacate.
Be smart and don’t screw up your rental history and your credit over an apartment. Most landlords do a background check to see if you have any eviction history and many (most?) won’t rent to you if you do.
An apartment you’ve been in for only 1 year isn’t worth the damage to your rental history.
Generally, in NY the landlord has to give you 30 days notice.
At the end of the lease, they can definitely kick you out.
Or alternately, they can offer you a new lease with whatever rent increase they feel like and there’s nothing you can do about it other than move out or agree to the higher rent.
Either way, they own the house and you don’t.
In the future, if you want to stay in an apartment longer, negotiate a longer lease.
But the reality is that you have the right to legal process. So if you don’t move out, they can’t just change the locks, they have to serve you with papers seeking to evict you as a holdover tenant. In the end, assuming you are not a rent stabilized tenant, you would lose and a judge would give the landlord the right to evict you through a marshall. Of course, being a party in a housing court matter is now used by some landlords as a reason not to rent to you, so you probably want to avoid that. A good lawyer would advise a landlord to begin the eviction process the day you overstayed last year’s lease. So you have to weigh that out. Bummer.