Need answer kind of fast, preferably by tomorrow afternoon!
I’m moving out of state which complicates things ever so slightly. When I saw that the apartment I was viewing was still occupied at the time, one of the first questions I asked the leasing agent was if he knew when the current tenants planned on vacating. He told me some business about their just having bought a house and their plans to move out in the middle of the month. Great. I also asked if I could move in a day early, and was told that was fine. Moving my stuff in a day or two before my official move-in date wouldn’t be a problem, and they wouldn’t charge me anything for it.
Fast forward to today. Current tenants are staying put until noon of April 30th, which is the same time, exactly, that I need to be out of where I live now. I guess that’s fine. I’d start moving out in the morning, and by the time the truck is loaded and I’ve completed the roughly seven hour drive, the tenants would be long gone. But is that going to give management enough time to clean, paint or whatever else they need to do to make the apt pretty for me? I’m thinking I should beg my current landlord (who is super nice) to allow me to move out first thing May 1 morning? They don’t have any tenants lined up yet, and the landlord has been incredibly accommodating about everything for the four years I’ve lived here, so I’m pretty sure he’ll say yes, but one can’t be certain. What if he lands a tenant between now and then, or becomes far less accommodating all of a sudden? Then what?
I just don’t want to be sleeping in a U-Haul overnight.
You current landlord gives you a day. You might even be able to rent an extra day or two for a fee.
If you can keep the truck an extra day or two (should be able to for a fee), you can move in to your new place the same day the prior tenants move out. The way it could work is that you’d arrive at the new place ready to unload, and then just sit tight and wait. Hopefully, the old tenants are done before it’s too late in the evening … but even if they work through the afternoon, you’re in good shape. That first night, you don’t attemp to totally unload the truck. Just enough so that you can get out a bed or sofa or futon or something to sleep on. You eat fast food that day, and you sleep that first night in a largely empty apartment. The next day, you can unpack more fully.
As for giving time to the new apartment management to make-ready your new place – talk to them about it in advance. You can probably waive some of the make-ready if time is an issue, but see what they can get done in that first evening, or during the morning of that next day. Some of it may even be able to be done while you are moved in (e.g. certain kinds of repairs, carpet cleaning, HVAC cleaning, etc.).
If you don’t care about the place looking pretty, you move your stuff in when the previous tenant moves out. You might indeed spend the night in the truck, or on a friend’s couch, or a motel, if it takes them longer in the day to move than they anticipated (almost certain to happen) and you don’t like schlepping furniture in the dark.
If you do care about the place looking pretty, you can suggest the landlord put you up in a motel and pay the extra truck fees for a couple of days, since you’re paying rent for the 1st and he doesn’t have the unit ready. Or you can suggest he do the work around your stuff after you’ve moved in, which won’t be fun for anybody. Or you can suggest that you do the work - painting, cleaning carpets, etc. and give him the receipts for supplies and an agreed upon wage for labor to take off your June rent. Make sure, if you choose the last, that you get a budget for supplies - hate to have you buy nice paint to find out he’s only willing to pay for the cheap stuff, and that you make the agreement in writing with signatures.
Depending on the law in your state, this may be more your landlord’s problem than yours. Depends what the law says about cleaning/painting/maintenance between tenants. If it’s required, he’s got to do it before you move in, which might mean refunding your April rent and security deposit and writing a new lease for May 1st if you insist. That’s a headache and a half, so he might be more willing to pony up some cash to put you up for a couple of nights instead. If the law says nothing about needing to clean/paint/maintain between tenants, you might be SOL.
Get an extra day from the current place if at all possible. You don’t want to be on the street with your stuff. And once you move in, having the new landlord fix anything or paint will be a pain.
Had a similar, but worse, situation once. Moved everything to a storage unit. Lived in a Motel. Gradually moved from the storage facility to the new apartment over the course of a month. It sucked.
If I thought you were going to be moving to Anaheim, I’d invite you to spend a few days while the management in your new place takes care of the necessary.
You don’t know the other tenants will be out on time, do you? From what I can tell, you EXPECT the other tenants to be out on April 30, but what if they hold over and don’t move out on April 30? If that happens, then the landlord has to possibly go through an entire eviction action to get them out, and that can linger on for weeks. Plan for THAT contingency, and if they do voluntarily move out on April 30, then hip hip hooray!
The landlord has a duty to put you in possession of the new place on the agreed date. If the landlord fails, then that shouldn’t be your problem.
You should talk to the new landlord about compensating you for your costs and troubles if the tenants hold over (e.g., motel, truck rental, possibly having to hire movers, and/or storage costs).
I would extend your place by a day or two. I’d also contact the new landlord and ask him what the hell he’s going to do?
is the old tenet really moving out
if the old tenet really is moving out, does he have enough time to repaint and otherwise clean up the place? Repainting is pretty standard and while it’s possible to do that in a couple of hours depending on the size, the new paint smell will be bad
maybe your new landlord is liable to put you up in a hotel, etc if the move in date doesn’t happen. read your lease and check what the “model lease” says for the state you’ll be moving to.
What Bearflag said. These people are buying a house. Lots of things go wrong with that (one of the lawyers has a conflict and the closing gets postponed). It may be that they have already closed on the house and are just waiting for the painters to be finished, but you won’t really know that (and things can go wrong with that as well). Personally, I would not even put my stuff in a truck unless the apartment I was moving to was empty (and ready for me).
You can stay in your current apartment. Your landlord cannot evict you on such short notice. What he may be able to do is charge you for the month of May.
That can get very sticky. It may not be in your best interest to simply hold over on your current landlord just because the new place isn’t ready for you. That’s not your current landlord’s problem. If you do that, then you are putting your current landlord in the position of having to evict YOU. That may not turn out so well for you.
The best option may be coming up with a written agreement with your current landlord for a flexible move out date with all rent to be paid at the daily rate through the actual move-out date. If your current landlord doesn’t go for that, then consider a motel and extended truck rental at the new landlord’s expense for potentially a few weeks or as many days as it takes until the new place is all painted and ready for you.
Whatever you end up doing, be sure to do a THOROUGH walk-through before you start moving in. Take pictures of everything. Make notes and take more pix of anything that wasn’t done, done wrong, etc. Get the new landlord to sign off on this list.
You don’t want to end up getting stuck years from now for stuff that the landlord didn’t make right before you moved in.
This is always a good idea, but especially so in this situation, since everything is likely to be rushed.
The truck rate includes three days, so holding out for an extra day or two won’t cost me money. That’s one good thing. Another thing I just thought of is if my current landlord won’t allow me an extra day, I can put my stuff in a truck on the 30th and sleep over at a friend’s before driving down. I was so worried about being stranded in the new town that I forgot I have the option of hanging out in the old one.
It’s possible that the current tenants can be enormous dicks and refuse to move out when their lease is up, but I really don’t expect that to happen. If it does, my landlord can’t keep my money for rent for a place that was not available for me to live in. Still, that doesn’t make it any less of a royal pain in my ass! It’s all fine and good that June’s rent would be discounted for whatever amount I was barred from the apt I paid for during May, but that doesn’t give me a place to sleep Sunday night or a place to get ready for work Monday morning. Regarding making the place pretty, my lease says the building engineers will have made “necessary preparations” by my move in date. I don’t know what kind of speed cleaners and painters they’re going to have swoop in there, but as long as the place is clean and nice, I’m happy. If it isn’t, then fine, they’ll just have to paint and repair around me. Annoying, yes, but a lot less annoying than being homeless.
Anywho, my current landlord isn’t available until tomorrow. First I will kindly ask him to allow me to sleep in for an extra night, then I’ll… I dunno, find out just exactly how ready this new place is going to be May 1, and what they’ll do if it’s not.
This was all so much nicer when I thought those kind folks were going to have been out by now. Grr.
Ah. For some reason I thought you had a week before starting work. That’s gonna suck.
Still, t’were it me I’d invest the suck at the front end and give the LL time to clean and paint. It’s going to suck longer and harder to be stuck in a poorly maintained apartment.
