Moving out of Apt without giving 60 day notice

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

Okay, so my wife and I have found a house that we want to rent. Unfortunately, our current apartment office is giving us and our future landlord a difficult time. They claim that we need to give them 60 days notice to moving out, and won’t release any of our information to him. After arguing on the phone for about 10 minutes, they agreed they could take a temporary notice over e-mail to release our information, and then we would have to come in and sign the paperwork later to make it official.

Now the problems starts. We want to give them 30 days notice. They say that we can’t do that, and want to put us on the hook for another 1100 dollars (one month plus some extra fee) to complete a full 60 day notice.

We don’t want to pay 1100 dollars for an empty apartment, and we think they are being unreasonable in requiring 60 written days notice, when I had already informed them of us moving out verbally well over a month ago. Some of my co-workers have told me apartment complexes require stuff like this, but can’t really do anything if you are out by your lease end date. What options do we have, if any?

Another hypothetical: Let’s say we go in there and say, “Here is our 30 days notice in writing. This is all you are getting.” Then we move out on our scheduled 30 days notice and turn in our keys.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

ETA: We currently live in Texas, if this matters.

#2

What does your lease specify?

#3

What does it say about all this in your lease?

ETA - do you have a security deposit?

Regards,
Shodan

#4

What city and state do you live in?

#5

http://www.tenant.net/Other_Areas/Texas/tenants.html

#6

Texas Tenant’s Union

Following links therin, you can find the Texas Property Code at:
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PR/htm/PR.91.htm

Which states the law or terminating a month to month rental tenancy (no lease)
*Sec. 91.001. NOTICE FOR TERMINATING CERTAIN TENANCIES.
a) A monthly tenancy or a tenancy from month to month may be terminated by the tenant or the landlord giving notice of termination to the other.

(b) If a notice of termination is given under Subsection (a) and if the rent-paying period is at least one month, the tenancy terminates on whichever of the following days is the later:

(1) the day given in the notice for termination; or

(2) one month after the day on which the notice is given.
*

#7

Our landlords tried to do this to us too. Florida statute is the same as Texas’ in this case, fortunately. Show them the statute and invite them to do their worst. They’ll fold instantly.

#8

What does your lease say? Are you required to give notice? How much?

It should be in black & white, somewhere. If you don’t have a lease then statutory regulations should govern - state, county and possibly municipal ordinances should be available to you.

Is there a tenant resource center in your town or county?

#9

I got stuck with this during my last move. When I signed the lease papers at my old place (6 years ago), they required a 30-day move-out notice. I renewed every year for five years, but did not read the new lease documents carefully enough to notice that they’d snuck in a change to that policy to a 60-day notice, so that when I moved in with the SO, I got stuck with an extra month of rent.

I realize that this was totally and completely my fault. I still think it was sneaky and underhanded of them.

AND, at the end of what would have been the 30-day notice period, they called me to say “where are your keys? We’ve rented your apartment!” I told them that according to their own policy, that apartment was still mine for another 30 days (I was taking my time moving things out, so I didn’t have to do it all in one day). They tried to ream me a new one, but I simply reminded them of their own policy (snuck into the new lease papers at some point without my awareness).

They then tried to pull a guilt trip of “now you’ve made a family lose their home!” I told them they’d never contacted me regarding any of this, neither to confirm that I was moving out at the 30-day notice I originally tried to give them (in writing), or the 60-day notice that they (in writing) informed me I was required to give them.

Anyway, totally my fault on the side of not reading every word of the lease renewals at every renewals. I do think they were sleazy for sneaking it in, knowing that probably most people don’t read every single word of a lease renewals unless they’re told something’s changed (which I had not been).

#10

Almost always, when something specifies ‘written’ notice, there is a reason.

In this case, imagine you’re a landlord and a tenant tells you he’s leaving on a specific date. The new tenant shows up and the old one is still there. Now it’s he said/she said, almost impossible to fairly resolve legally, (and poor future tenant out a home!). Written notice is required so when that new tenant shows up the landlord has something to demonstrate that the previous tenant did, in fact, give notice.

Where I live the law require 60 days written notice, your convenience notwithstanding. Fail to put it in writing at your own peril.

#11

You know you could have probably gotten the extra months rent back if you gave them the keys? It may have been illegal for them to collect double rent, but if not they’d probably give it to you anyhow to get another paying tenant moved in.

Which is a side point for the OP – if you advertise the place yourself and find someone they approve, then you can probably get that portion of the rent back (check local laws, etc). They just want the place rented, giving you a hassle is a side effect. Worth mentioning, it’s worked for me.

#12

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, I checked my lease and it does say 60 days notice. So I guess my next question is if there is a Texas state law that would supercede the leasing agreement, similar to what Really Not All That Bright said. I will have to go through the links everyone provided and see what I can do. Man, 1100 dollars is a pretty expensive lesson to learn.

#13

The notice is to protect landlords from having empty units. If you or they can find someone to take over so they don’t lose any rent, they wouldn’t have much of a legal leg to stand on if they’d tried to go after you for the second 30 days. I also understand that they can’t just sit back and not try to rent the place, then take you to small claims court for the $1100, but I’d be looking for a tenant too, to cover my butt.

I can just hear the Judge Judy conversation:
“Did you move out without giving 60 days notice?”
“Yes”
“Landlord, when did you rent the place again?”
“Right after the old tenants moved out.”
“So you didn’t lose any rent?”
“No…”
“Case dismissed.”

Uh, I’m not a lawyer. :slight_smile:

#14

It is my very unprofessional and unlawyerly understanding that tenants cannot ever sign away rights that they have. Your lease can’t grant you fewer rights than you have by law. Not a lawyer, just what I’ve picked up from reading things written by people here who are–verify it with someone who knows what they’re talking about, etc. etc.

#15

The same thing happened to me. Incidentally enough while I was also living in Texas, though the other apartment complexes I had lived in there required only a 30 day notice.
Anyway, the reason I left was because I got a job in another part of the country and they wanted me to start working three weeks after making the offer - basically just enough time to give my former workplace two weeks notice with a week to actually move.
When I called my landlord (after a week of unsuccessfully trying to get a hold of her) she informed me that I needed to put in 60 days notice and that I was on the hook for not only the next month’s rent (it was toward the end of the month when I got the job offer), but the month after that as well. She too refused to give any information to our future landlord until I paid in full.
I told her I was cool paying the next month’s rent, since I was going to be spending a good portion of that month in the apartment, but the month after that seemed pretty excessive. After a war of words she refused to budge.
Eventually I just gave up and ponied up the money. I thought about just dropping my key in the slot and not paying anything. But my wife and I wanted to buy a house in the near future and didn’t figure it was worth the hit to our credit score we might incur by not paying.
The night before leaving I went and pissed all over the office door and in the mail slot. Immature, I know, but it did provide me with a little consolation.

#16

What if I made myself ineligible to lease at the apartments? The reason I bring this up, is that the office says my lease rolls over to a month to month lease after our 1 year agreement is up. In order to qualify for a lease there, you have to have renter’s insurance.

If I cancelled my renter’s insurance, would they be forced to not let me stay?