Timeframe to Renew Lease?
My lease is up on my market rate 1-bedroom apartment on April 30th. As of today (March 9th), I still have not received my renewal notice. More than likely, I will not be renewing due to price. However, I’m wondering if legally I am supposed to be given a certain amount of notice to receive…
My lease is up on my market rate 1-bedroom apartment on April 30th. As of today (March 9th), I still have not received my renewal notice. More than likely, I will not be renewing due to price. However, I’m wondering if legally I am supposed to be given a certain amount of notice to receive my renewal offer, and whether or not that is a certain amount of time I have to give my reply.
Good afternoon everyone:
I came across this forum topic from google!
Here is my situation. My Wife and I rent an apt. in a brownstone in Jersey City. Our lease is up this April 30. We don’t want to renew for a year, but going on a month to month basis would buy us more time to find a new place. On a side note, the tenants in the building got a notice handed to us a couple of weeks ago from a law firm, stating that this building might be going into foreclosure. The management company sent a letter from THEIR lawyer basically stating keep paying your rent!
They are not a good management company in my opinion, but basically our lease states:
AT THE END OF THIS LEASE THE TENANT MUST GIVE THE LANDLORD A WRITTEN NOTICE BEFORE THE END OF THE LEASE, STATING THAT THE LEASE WILL NOT BE RENEWED. IF THIS WRITTEN NOTICE IS NOT GIVEN OR IS NOT GIVEN IN THE REQUIRED TIME, THEN THE LEASE WILL RENEW ITSELF AUTOMATICALLY, AT LEAST ON A MONTH-TO-MONTH BASIS, GENERALLY WITH THE SAME TERMS AND CONDITIONS. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE US WITH CERTIFIED WRITTEN NOTICE AT LEAST ONE FULL MONTH BEFORE THE END OF THE LEASE. THE NOTICE MUST TELL US THAT YOU ARE MOVING OUT WHEN THE LEASE ENDS.
SOOOOO, if we don’t send written notice, we are then on a month-month come May 1?
I am thinking about not sending anything or sending a certified letter tomorrow stating we are not renewing our lease on a yearly basis and wish to continue on a month-to-month basis.
I am a little concerned as it is that if the are in some kind of foreclosure that we will have a hard time getting our security back, but like I said we don’t want to stay here.
Well just long enough to find a place then give 30 day’s notice.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, as well as knowledge of any large 1 or a 2br beautiful apt. with great kitchen available!!
Thanks all!
Iron is right – most landlords with a pulse and a brain (that probably shrunk the pool a little)see its in their interest, especially in this market to have that sorted out asap. You still have a month plus, if you don’t hear something by the end of March, force the issue with your April rent.
Thanks for your reply vinca, 23 would’ve been a little stretch, but I’m actually 25 now, been on BS for a while and I never thought to update my age every birthday.
It’s in most landlord’s interest to have leases signed well in advance of their termination dates. I never suggested I landlord shouldn’t “communicate” with a tenant. On the contrary, of course landlords should. I simply was addressing the legal requirements regarding common free market leases.
My bad, fmb, I got the math wrong. Since your bio says you’re 23, you’ve been moving from rental to rental since you’re 16 or 15 or 14 or 13? I’ve been supporting myself since I was 16, so I know that’s possible. Yet it still remains that neither you nor your girlfriend has a track record for staying long in one place. In an unregulated apartment, unless written into lease, there’s no requirement for a LL to offer you a renewal. They can wait until one month/30 days prior to expiration of your lease and send you a notice of non-renewal and/or termination. Anything you want to document, including a request for a renewal lease, can be put in writing anytime and sent certified, without awaiting correspondence from your LL. Until you do that, all the rest is posturing, including your terms that the renewal rate reflect “a fair drop.”
vinca: I said “between me and my girlfriend” meaning over the last 10 years, we’ve each moved 7 or 8 times, we’ve only been living together for a few months. And I never claimed to be selling a story.
The reason I keep calling for my renewal is because in the event that the renewal rate is a fair drop, we’ll stay here. However, I won’t know that rate UNTIL THEY SEND ME THE RENEWAL NOTICE! Like slopette above me, if I decline, I would like to have that documented.
Clearly you’re a landlord, and you’ve been burned before, perhaps because your tenants didn’t like you, so perhaps I can’t rationalize to you why dealing with incompetent people has lead me to believe that it could take me 6 months to get my security deposit back and thus might let them use it as my last month’s rent.
I had to call my LL four or five times to get the lease renewal sent (for a stabilized apartment), and each time they told me the same thing — “it’s in the mail.” I planned on leaving but wanted it documented that I was declining to renew, as they’d been very sloppy with paperwork and depositing checks in the past.
I also called several times and wrote one letter and two faxes in order to get my security deposit back. It took months but I got it.
Some people are really bad with communication. I’m glad I don’t rent from those sorts of people anymore… not worth the stress, IMHO.
Sorry, I don’t buy fishermb’s story. OP reports moving 15 times in the last 10 years…and how long were the terms for each of those leases? If he “will likely be moving out,” then what exactly is he asking for when he calls LL or management company two times a week for the past month (assuming he actually is)? OP’s post and follow-up strikes me as a glorified rationalization for why he won’t pay the last month’s rent, and why he intends to leave the LL holding the bag re: repairs. Thanks to the growing number of tenants with this approach, it’s now become commonplace for LL’s to counter by requesting first, last AND security.
ib & tybur6 I hope, are not LLs.
What a stupid attitude to take towards a tenant…what’s wrong with LL actually communicating with tenant & vice-versa even if it’s not a legal requirement? It’s entitled attitudes like this that get you the tenants from hell, rightly so.