Most leases start on the first day of a month and end on the last day of a month. So assuming you’re leaving an old apartment on the last day of the month, to move to another apartment where no special arrangements can be made to move in prior to the first of the month, what do you do with your stuff for that one day? And where do you stay?
I think the answer is that “special arrangements” are almost always made. Landlords know what the logistics of moving are and expect to lose some rent between occupants for cleaning and showing. Giving (or prorating) you an extra day or two is just the cost of doing business. Lease periods don’t have to corespond with any particular day of the month.
It was once the actual custom in New York City for over a million people to move simultaneously.
However in the modern world of renting in NYC, usually you can move in a few days early, and if you can’t you can arrange a few extra days in your current place at a per diem rate.
Remember it’s not the case that you are on the heels of the exiting tenant. Around here, the landlord is required to paint between tenants and most have the apartment professionally cleaned. So it’s standing empty, that’s why moving in early is almost always possible.
The times I did it I overlapped by a month at each place.
I was married and we made good money so we could afford it.
What would happen is I would do most of the packing and running all the small stuff from one to the other until the only stuff left was what we still using.
Then he’d get his friends together and they’d move all the big stuff.
His friends loved me because they said I made the job easy, all they really had to move was the big/heavy furniture.
Then they got pizza and beer.
Then we’d have time to go back and clean the place we left.
Same thing when we bought a house, I kept the apartment one month longer after we settled.
I have seen people clean out their apartment in one day, leave their furniture in the truck over night then move into the new place the next day.
This custom still exists in Montreal - July 1st is moving day there (it’s when the ROC celebrates Canada Day). A lot of times there’s not a great deal of overlap between when you have to leave and when you can move in. In practice, you just end up coordinating with the previous tenants of the place you’re moving into, and the future tenants of the place you’re moving out of. Chances are that they’re finding themselves in a similar situation, so they’ll be sympathetic to your predicament. Last time I moved, the previous tenants gave us the keys a few days before 1 July, so we had the chance to move in early and avoid moving day itself.
In the part of Canada that I am in, it is common to have the lease expire at noon on the last day, and the new lease to take effect at that time or later. So the old tenant would have to be out by noon, leaving the rest of the day for the landlord to do the move-out inspection, carpet cleaning, etc.
I’ve never had a lease that started on the first or last day of the month. It’s fairly normal to move in on a random day, and pay a pro-rated rate for the partial month.
It’s also fairly common for a room or apartment to be vacant for a bit between tenants. A tenant may move out a bit earlier than the end of her lease for whatever reason – the things that make people decide to move aren’t always synched to the first of the month. And there is often a few days for cleaning and maintenance.
A landlord has to build some downtime into their financial projections. You can’t expect 100% occupancy all the time. It’s just one of the costs of doing business.
I often see apartments advertised with something like “Move-In Special!!! Half Off First Months Rent!!!”
Deals like that would seem to be tailor-made for just this reason.
In two cases where I’ve moved to a distant city (meaning, 3-to-4 hour drive), I’ve rented a self-storage space at an in-between point. Before the move, I move most of my stuff from the old place to the storage place, keeping out only the absolute minimum things I need every day.
On or about moving day, I move just the things I’ve kept out, from the old place to the new place.
Thereafter, at my convenience, I move stuff from the storage place to the new place.
This saved me from having to do long 8-hour round-trip drives between the old place and the new place.
Well for one leases start pretty much whenever, it was a quirk of NYC that a huge number started/ended on the same day not only of the month but the same month of each year and was basically the result of a city ordinance.
The property management company we use to manage our residential properties has software that is pretty standard in our industry for handling this sort of thing. Tenant comes in and says, “Alright, we’d like to move in June 27th” and that is when their lease starts. It can either run a year to another odd-day later, or it can run longer than a year so it ends exactly at the end of some month.
The property manager doesn’t even have to do any work, they just type in the tenant’s info and their move in date and the monthly rent and hit print and the software generates a payment schedule, including the amount and due date of the pro-rate payment for any partial months involved. All of our residential properties also automatically convert to month-to-month tenancy after the initial lease period expires so those tenants when they finally move out don’t have to worry about timing it to a lease end since they can end their month-to-month at any time with 30 days notice.
When I was younger I moved all in the same day before, with move out day the exact same date as move in day somewhere else. It’s not that big a deal when you’re young and haven’t accumulated a ton of stuff. You just end up with stuff getting packed up in a moving vehicle either the day of or the night before, and then you sleep at a friend’s house or even in a car for a night.
Anyone else live in a college town? EVERYONE moves on August 15.
Some landlords are now kicking previous tenants out on the 13th so they can clean the place. We’ve had a number of friends crash in our living room with most of their possessions in their car for a couple of days.
Those days are known as “Hobo Christmas” because of all the stuff out on the curb then. Traffic’s insane with moving vans, trucks and packed cars pulled up on curbs and double-parked. In fact, a kid got hit by a car near our house because things were so crazy … on August 15.
I’ll be moving from one rented house to another soon. The lease on the new place starts 2 weeks before the old lease expires, giving me plenty of time to move all of my stuff and clean up the old place. I’ll be paying for 2 places during those 2 weeks, but it beats trying to do everything in one or 2 days.
The idea that all leases begin on the first day of a month and end on the last day of a month is a little crazy to me. This has never been the case for me. They have always “prorated” out extra days and I’ve never planned a move without a bit of overlap where I’m paying for rent on both apartments for a little while!
It was Aug 15th in Madison, WI. We hosted a homeless student overnight sail-and-sleep at the sailing club a few years just to cater to this group. The one year I needed to take advantage of this it poured rain all night. :o
I’m facing the situation outlined in the OP right now, or have it even better. My lease ends May 31st (the house needs to be empty and clean by the next morning), and I get keys to the new place “at noon in the first weekday of the month”, that is, June 3rd this year. Fucking sucks.
I think at least once, I’ve been in an shared apartment where someone incoming moved their stuff in a day or two before the outgoing person got all of their stuff out. There was just a pile of boxes and minor furniture in the living room for a day and then everything was sorted out.
September 1 here in Boston.
It’s always a race to see who will be the first student-in-transit to get their moving truck stuck on Soldier’s Field Road, under the Western Ave Bridge.
Still is, in Madison. My daughter and her fiancé (husband by then) are going to have to deal with the old mid-August shuffle. Their plan is to try to stash a lot of their stuff at a nearby relative’s house in early August, to try to keep the August 15 move to a reasonable amount.
Most places I’ve moved into were already empty when I signed the lease, and I was allowed to move in anywhere from a few days to two weeks early. It’s nice, because I haven’t had to pay double rent for that time.
There was only once in my 20-odd years of renting that the previous tenant had moved out the day before, and it was a bit of a nightmare when I arrived with a moving truck/crew and nowhere to go but in after a 40 mile move. There were a bunch of units emptying at the same time, and the building manager was trying to do everything himself instead of having painting/cleaning crews ready, so I had to stash all my stuff in the kitchen and dining room for a couple days until the carpets could be cleaned and another week until the bathroom tile (that the previous tenant had painted orange - we didn’t realize it when initially viewing the place because she had also put orange lights in the bathroom sockets) could be replaced and the place re-painted. Oy, I was pissed, and was vocal enough about it they gave me half my rent back for the month. I’m sure they kept the previous tenant’s security deposit!
Pretty much every apartment I’ve lived in charged a deposit plus last month’s rent to move in. That way you can use what you’d usually spend on rent to cover the first month on the new place (plus last and deposit) and you have a month of overlap. You could start your new lease later and just have a smaller overlap to save money, but in any case you’ve already paid the last month at the old place on the day you first move in.
Yeah, I’ve certainly lived in places that did the whole first-last and/or at least a whole month deposit thing. The last two places I’ve lived in, though (with huge 50+ building management companies) just required a $250 non-refundable deposit (or move-in fee, if you will) and nothing else. The place before those, some 12 years ago, was just a one-month deposit, so I haven’t had the last month rent covered in a long time!