This is a really bad idea. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this is a really stupid idea. If you’re determined not to let this drop, then take him to court.
LOL. Then you’re next landlord would be the State Dept of Corrections. Probably for a very long-term lease.
Then again, I don’t know how legally binding such contracts are in Fantasyland.
I am not a lawyer, but I am a landlord (in NJ). As I understand the situation here, **jmb819 **signed a lease ending July 31. He has already moved out last week (lets say July 19), effectively breaking the lease.
Under NJ law the landlord is entitled to receive rent from jmb819 until such time as the lease ends or the place is rented to a new tenant. Since a new tenant moved in on July 26, it’s my understanding that he is entitled to 6 days of rent.
What you should do (assuming the law is similar in your state) is get a copy of your lease, any correspondence between you and the landlord regarding your move out date and a copy of the new tenants lease (which I’m sure is on record with the town somewhere) and take your landlord to small claims court.
Or find a time machine and find 25 year old Martin Hyde.
I’m pretty sure you no longer have a legal right to be in the apartment. You broke the lease when you moved out. The fact that you are still responsible for paying for the remaining lease doesn’t entitle you to the apartment. Particularly if it’s occupied.
Bad idea on paper, but sometimes actions like this will bring results very quickly. Is it worth it to the landlord to pay me the $300 he owes me and not deal with something like that?
I can hire an attorney and state that I was illegally evicted and homeless for 6 days. That for sure will sit well for my pocket, especially in tenant friendly NYC… and it’ll help that I have a 4 month old baby too. Illegally evicting a paying tenant while under his lease with his 4 month old baby and forced to sleep in the car for the 6 days. How would that sound to a judge?
The new tenant is an innocent party. If you enter what is now his apartment, you might find yourself in legal trouble.
How?
I’ve never seen a lease that says “you will spend every night in this apartment” or “you will keep X amount of your goods and chattels here.” The lease is broken when you stop paying, not when the landlord decides you’ve moved.
This happened to me once too. I planned to move out the middle of the month, and asked the landlord if he would prorate the last months rent. He said no, which he was perfectly within his rights to do. But a few days after I moved out, I saw that a new tenant had moved in. I sent him a certified letter stating pretty much what everyone above suggested. He caved and sent me a check for most of what I was looking for. A few weeks after I cashed the check, I left a pile of those “Tenants Rights” pamphlets in the lobby of his building.
I drank far too much and was extremely rash in that period of my life. To be frank I’m surprised that 1) I was able to maintain my career during this time and 2) that I never ended up in prison. I committed some crimes, but luckily nothing so serious that it ever came back on me. Like I said, not proud of it, but if I came home and someone had set my pet loose and thrown all my shit away c. 1990 or so I’m not sure I’d be able to get a hold of my emotions before I did something extremely rash.
As a point of reference me and a friend were walking down the street once and a guy ran past me and pulled a gold necklace off my neck, ripping it off, and kept running. We both chased after him, my friend was faster than me (he was a short but stocky Italian kid from New York who was a running back in college) and caught up to him first, when I arrived we both basically beat the guy into a pulp. Given the time/place, the two of us (two white guys, both officers in the military) and the thief (shady / probably homeless black guy) the police just picked the guy up and threw him into the back of their car and drove off, but in theory they could’ve charged us with assault.
In the present tense I’m a partner in a real estate development company / property management firm and our standard lease for residential properties goes to month-to-month after one year, and is terminable with 30 days notice. So in the scenario outlined in this thread if OP gave us 30 days notice he was moving out on the 26th, that’d be the last day of his lease. It’s possible the land lord in this scenario maybe operates the same way, but in a less organized fashion so he ended up double dipping.
In theory if the OP had indicated to the land lord he was moving out on x date, that could be said to be breaking the lease. The proper thing for the landlord to do would be to have pro-rated rent. But whether he’s required to do this or not would depend on State/local laws and the specifics of the lease signed.
My advice would be either get your land lord to approve of pro-rating ahead of time (and for month-to-month leases this is pretty typical as long as you give appropriate notice), or just tell him you’re moving out on the last day of the lease. Your land lord doesn’t need to know the actual day you move out
Wtf, no he hasn’t. That’s not what breaking a lease means. If he gave the landlord 30 days notice, he can physically move out any time within those 30 days that he wants to, he’d just still be on the hook for the remaining days.
Jmb819 has no right to any of his money back, you are responsible for that entire month whether you were actually there or not. It’s the new tenant the landlord screwed over, not you.
OP paid for an entire month of quiet enjoyment of the property and did not receive 6 days of that quiet enjoyment. The new tenant paid and did receive it. Yes, the OP was “on the hook” for the 30 days if the LL did not find a new tenant. But the LL did and was paid twice for those 6 days. Tell us again who was screwed over?
I had a lease that had such a provision in it. I don’t have it to look at, but as I recall it wasn’t written in a way that if you went on vacation for a week you had broken the lease. It was probably something about the apartment having to obviously be your primary residence.
I got screwed over by it because while I was taking my time getting around to cleaning up my old, empty apartment during the month of overlap with my new place, management cleaned it up and rented it out to someone else. They charged me not just for the cleaning but also for the keys that I returned before the lease was set to expire but after they’d gotten the new tenant in there.
Is that a NJ requirement? I own rental properties in NY and FL, and the only ones filed with any town are Section 8 tenants (and I’m not sure they are public record). I do have rental permits filed with the town, but never the lease.
It was the OP’s choice to leave early. I don’t know what “quiet enjoyment” has to do with anything. Did he think that if no one was there that he would get 6 days of rent back? No, he was going to pay that no matter what.
I don’t believe he does. The landlord has no standing to make a new lease until the old lease is no longer in force. The tenant is the victim of a fraud, but he has no legal claim to the apartment. Imagine if I put an ad in Craigslist to rent out your house, and signed a lease with a tenant to that effect. Is that lease binding on you?
I pretty much lose any sympathy for an OP that’s willing to intrude on and basically harass the new tenant, who has absolutely nothing to do with the the OP’s issue with the landlord.
True, but once the owner rented the apartment the game changed. The owner is double-dipping the rent at this point.
“Quiet enjoyment” is a legal term meaning use of the property without undue intrusion or disruption. By renting the apartment while a valid lease was enforce the OP lost the ability to use that space yet paid for it.
I’ll bow out after this, but I’m offering this advice from the point of view of having to document everything for potential Legal action when I was a Landlord. You, as Tenant, should do the same. If it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen. Legally speaking. What you’re suggesting is not a good idea. Plus, it’s really, really uncool. The new tenant never did anything to you personally. You’re going to get the police called on you.
Do you own a gun? Have you got ammunition for it?
The landlord owes you 6 days of rent - the law is clear on this.
If he does not pay, many states provide for collection of treble damages. If you are in a situation where treble damages can be awarded, you may find it easier than some here are suggesting to collect the money you are owed. Where I live, the possibility of a decision in favor of awarding a tenant triple the amount is something that tends to make landlords more compliant once this is pointed out to them. But this all depends upon the laws and practices in place in the area where this has occurred.