This is the first place I could think of to ask about this...
We just bought a house, moved in 7 weeks ago. As soon as our offer was accepted on the place at the end of April, we notified our landlords (a rental company that owns various apartment complexes across the country) and, as per the clause in our rental agreement (due to end Dec 31 2008) that said that the lease could be broken with the agreement of the landlords, given two months notice plus the payment of an extra month's rent for the inconvenience of breaking the lease, we gave them a check for the 'inconvenience fee', a check for May's rent, and promised that June's rent would be forthcoming at the end of May when we moved out (ie, two months notice even though we'd only be living there for one month).
We initially sent an email to the property manager (saying that we'd be paying the May rent and the inconvenience fee ASAP - ie as soon as she acknowledged our notice - and the June rent when it was due, taking us up to the end of notice period at the end of June), who in her usual style, totally failed to respond. After waiting a couple of days and hearing nothing, my husband took the checks into the rental office where the property manager happily accepted them, apologized for not having responded to the email, and said that even though we were now a few days into May, she would backdate our notice to the beginning of May as that is when we had notified them. They went over everything and agreed on what was going to happen. I was more than a little concerned at not having her explicit agreement to all this in writing, but my husband reassured me that there was no problem, everything was agreed to, and she'd accepted that we were ending the lease at the end of June and paying an extra month's rent for the inconvenience of breaking the lease. The checks were duly cashed, we moved out into our new house, and at the end of June returned the keys to the property manager. All very friendly and no hint of problems.
Then today we get home to find a letter from THAT VERY SAME property manager, in the guise of a letter about us forfeiting our security deposit, listing a couple of charges for carpet cleaning and general wear and tear (about $80 out of the $300 deposit) and then billing us for the rent through until the end of December (several thousand dollars), minus a credit for 'advance rent payment' (clearly the 'inconvenience fee' we paid to break our lease, although they have listed the wrong amount) - finishing with the threat that if we don't pay them all these thousands of dollars within 30 days, they are going to send us to collections.
I am seething, and fuming, and very very worried indeed. My husband is unconcerned, saying that their having cashed the check clearly marked 'inconvenience fee' shows they agreed to our breaking of the lease, and that all this is laid out in our contract, and therefore we're not paying them a penny. I agree we're not paying them a penny, but am more than a little worried of the effect this will no doubt have on our credit if they follow through with this. We have (email) proof that we notified them in writing (if email counts), although they never responded to the email - and the property manager very definitely agreed to everything verbally with my husband. We also have a copy of the cashed 'inconvenience fee' check, clearly labelled as such. All the office staff from the property management company, the property manager included, were cheerfully asking us how the house-buying was coming along in the weeks before we left, etc etc... THEY AGREED TO IT and are now trying to **** us over.
Does anyone have any experience of anything like this? I am thinking it might be lawyer time here, but in the mean time... any advice or suggestions ANYONE can give (and please, no 'you should have got it in writing', yes, I know we should have!) would be very much appreciated.
edited to add... we are in Ohio.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:53 PM
... and edited AGAIN to add that I can't believe this cr*p!! I thought we'd endured the last of their marvellous mismanagement abilities when we managed to get our mortgage in spite of our most recent bank statement being one giant mess of NSF charges due to the incompetent company the landlords use to take automatic rent payments double-charging every single tenant in the building (and a few thousand more other unfortunates across the state), causing massive overdrafts and then taking DAYS to rectify the mess while ignoring all phone calls and denying any responsibility whatsoever. I thought at that point it was impossible to loathe these people more than I already did... but oh look, it IS possible.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:57 PM
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:58 PM
We just bought a house, moved in 7 weeks ago. As soon as our offer was accepted on the place at the end of April, we notified our landlords (a rental company that owns various apartment complexes across the country) and, as per the clause in our rental agreement (due to end Dec 31 2008) that said that the lease could be broken with the agreement of the landlords, given two months notice plus the payment of an extra month's rent for the inconvenience of breaking the lease, we gave them a check for the 'inconvenience fee', a check for May's rent, and promised that June's rent would be forthcoming at the end of May when we moved out (ie, two months notice even though we'd only be living there for one month).
We initially sent an email to the property manager (saying that we'd be paying the May rent and the inconvenience fee ASAP - ie as soon as she acknowledged our notice - and the June rent when it was due, taking us up to the end of notice period at the end of June), who in her usual style, totally failed to respond. After waiting a couple of days and hearing nothing, my husband took the checks into the rental office where the property manager happily accepted them, apologized for not having responded to the email, and said that even though we were now a few days into May, she would backdate our notice to the beginning of May as that is when we had notified them. They went over everything and agreed on what was going to happen. I was more than a little concerned at not having her explicit agreement to all this in writing, but my husband reassured me that there was no problem, everything was agreed to, and she'd accepted that we were ending the lease at the end of June and paying an extra month's rent for the inconvenience of breaking the lease. The checks were duly cashed, we moved out into our new house, and at the end of June returned the keys to the property manager. All very friendly and no hint of problems.
Then today we get home to find a letter from THAT VERY SAME property manager, in the guise of a letter about us forfeiting our security deposit, listing a couple of charges for carpet cleaning and general wear and tear (about $80 out of the $300 deposit) and then billing us for the rent through until the end of December (several thousand dollars), minus a credit for 'advance rent payment' (clearly the 'inconvenience fee' we paid to break our lease, although they have listed the wrong amount) - finishing with the threat that if we don't pay them all these thousands of dollars within 30 days, they are going to send us to collections.
I am seething, and fuming, and very very worried indeed. My husband is unconcerned, saying that their having cashed the check clearly marked 'inconvenience fee' shows they agreed to our breaking of the lease, and that all this is laid out in our contract, and therefore we're not paying them a penny. I agree we're not paying them a penny, but am more than a little worried of the effect this will no doubt have on our credit if they follow through with this. We have (email) proof that we notified them in writing (if email counts), although they never responded to the email - and the property manager very definitely agreed to everything verbally with my husband. We also have a copy of the cashed 'inconvenience fee' check, clearly labelled as such. All the office staff from the property management company, the property manager included, were cheerfully asking us how the house-buying was coming along in the weeks before we left, etc etc... THEY AGREED TO IT and are now trying to **** us over.
Does anyone have any experience of anything like this? I am thinking it might be lawyer time here, but in the mean time... any advice or suggestions ANYONE can give (and please, no 'you should have got it in writing', yes, I know we should have!) would be very much appreciated.
edited to add... we are in Ohio.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:53 PM
... and edited AGAIN to add that I can't believe this cr*p!! I thought we'd endured the last of their marvellous mismanagement abilities when we managed to get our mortgage in spite of our most recent bank statement being one giant mess of NSF charges due to the incompetent company the landlords use to take automatic rent payments double-charging every single tenant in the building (and a few thousand more other unfortunates across the state), causing massive overdrafts and then taking DAYS to rectify the mess while ignoring all phone calls and denying any responsibility whatsoever. I thought at that point it was impossible to loathe these people more than I already did... but oh look, it IS possible.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:57 PM
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 07:58 PM
Thanks for the answers... they really, really help, and it's good to get people's perspectives on this. (Thanks so much... I am so stressed about this right now I'm barely capable of typing - not like my usual endless rambles!)
Having ripped the house apart looking for the lease, we found it (my husband had taken it to work with him when he emailed the property manager so he'd be able to see the relevant clause) - this is what it says:
ENDING LEASE EARLY:
Resident may not end this lease before the date written in the lease without the written consent and approval of Landlord. The Landlord's consent and approval to the Resident's request to end the lease early may be granted or witheld at Landlord's choice. If Resident wishes to end this lease early then Resident must do the following:
1) Give a written request to Landlord to end the lease early;
2) Give the Landlord a fee equal to one month's rent at the time the request to end the lease early is made; and
3) Make the request to end the lease early at least two full calendar months in advance, meaning, for example, if Resident wanted to leave on May 31 Landlord would have to receive Resident's written request to end the lease early no later than March 31.
If the Landlord agrees to end the lease early then the fee will be kept by the Landlord to help defray the costs to the Landlord caused by the early termination of the lease. If the Landlord does not agree to end the lease early then the fee will be refunded.
OK. So. Biggest mistake was not getting this in writing, clearly. I wish I'd pushed that at the time, but with so much else going on, and the property manager's verbal agreement to and cheerful acceptance of the whole thing, I let it go.
We DID give a written (emailed, anyway - if that would stand up in any way) request... we DID give a fee of one month's rent at the same time as paying our May rent (thinking about it, I think they took May's rent automatically despite our having asked them to stop the automatic payments after they double-charged everyone the previous month), and the check is notated 'inconvenience fee' (in the email request/notification of ending the lease early, my husband had laid out what the lease said, and referred to that extra fee as an 'inconvenience fee'). When we'd still heard nothing in response to the email a couple of days after sending it, my husband went to the office in person (I think he wrote out that check there and then), and as I said, the property manager apologized for not having responded to the email yet, agreed that there was no problem ending our lease early, voluntarily said that she'd be backdating the notice period to May 1 (it was May 5 or 6 by this point) as we'd tried to talk to her in person when she'd not been in the office (and the other staff had no idea about this stuff), and then followed up by sending the email which she'd not responded to. They had a perfectly friendly chat in which both acknowledged that although we'd be paying rent up until the end of June, as we'd be moving out by the end of May, we would be happy for them to re-rent the apartment before the end of June if they found a tenant. When we finally did move the last of our stuff out and clean the place from top to bottom (something I doubt many departing tenants do), they cheerfully accepted the keys when my husband returned them to the office.
This management company weren't the most competent I'd ever come across (minor annoyances, mostly, but things like the above-mentioned property manager failing to give us a copy of our lease when we first signed it as she couldn't work the photocopier, then losing the original copy for weeks so we had to ask repeatedly if we could have a copy, then losing the voided check she requested to set up automatic rent payments, followed by losing the second voided check I gave her when she mislaid the first... etc etc!), so I have to say I breathed a huge sigh of relief when everything seemed to go smoothly. And then came home tonight to find this letter demanding the rest of the year's rent and threatening to send us to collections.
Great!
Again, thanks so much for the responses - I really, really appreciate it. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to deal with this and trying not to get too stressed out (that part isn't working, I am verrrrrry stressed out!)... and mostly just kicking myself that I didn't insist on getting the agreement in writing.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 10:31 PM
Having ripped the house apart looking for the lease, we found it (my husband had taken it to work with him when he emailed the property manager so he'd be able to see the relevant clause) - this is what it says:
ENDING LEASE EARLY:
Resident may not end this lease before the date written in the lease without the written consent and approval of Landlord. The Landlord's consent and approval to the Resident's request to end the lease early may be granted or witheld at Landlord's choice. If Resident wishes to end this lease early then Resident must do the following:
1) Give a written request to Landlord to end the lease early;
2) Give the Landlord a fee equal to one month's rent at the time the request to end the lease early is made; and
3) Make the request to end the lease early at least two full calendar months in advance, meaning, for example, if Resident wanted to leave on May 31 Landlord would have to receive Resident's written request to end the lease early no later than March 31.
If the Landlord agrees to end the lease early then the fee will be kept by the Landlord to help defray the costs to the Landlord caused by the early termination of the lease. If the Landlord does not agree to end the lease early then the fee will be refunded.
OK. So. Biggest mistake was not getting this in writing, clearly. I wish I'd pushed that at the time, but with so much else going on, and the property manager's verbal agreement to and cheerful acceptance of the whole thing, I let it go.
We DID give a written (emailed, anyway - if that would stand up in any way) request... we DID give a fee of one month's rent at the same time as paying our May rent (thinking about it, I think they took May's rent automatically despite our having asked them to stop the automatic payments after they double-charged everyone the previous month), and the check is notated 'inconvenience fee' (in the email request/notification of ending the lease early, my husband had laid out what the lease said, and referred to that extra fee as an 'inconvenience fee'). When we'd still heard nothing in response to the email a couple of days after sending it, my husband went to the office in person (I think he wrote out that check there and then), and as I said, the property manager apologized for not having responded to the email yet, agreed that there was no problem ending our lease early, voluntarily said that she'd be backdating the notice period to May 1 (it was May 5 or 6 by this point) as we'd tried to talk to her in person when she'd not been in the office (and the other staff had no idea about this stuff), and then followed up by sending the email which she'd not responded to. They had a perfectly friendly chat in which both acknowledged that although we'd be paying rent up until the end of June, as we'd be moving out by the end of May, we would be happy for them to re-rent the apartment before the end of June if they found a tenant. When we finally did move the last of our stuff out and clean the place from top to bottom (something I doubt many departing tenants do), they cheerfully accepted the keys when my husband returned them to the office.
This management company weren't the most competent I'd ever come across (minor annoyances, mostly, but things like the above-mentioned property manager failing to give us a copy of our lease when we first signed it as she couldn't work the photocopier, then losing the original copy for weeks so we had to ask repeatedly if we could have a copy, then losing the voided check she requested to set up automatic rent payments, followed by losing the second voided check I gave her when she mislaid the first... etc etc!), so I have to say I breathed a huge sigh of relief when everything seemed to go smoothly. And then came home tonight to find this letter demanding the rest of the year's rent and threatening to send us to collections.
Great!
Again, thanks so much for the responses - I really, really appreciate it. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to deal with this and trying not to get too stressed out (that part isn't working, I am verrrrrry stressed out!)... and mostly just kicking myself that I didn't insist on getting the agreement in writing.
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-21-2008 10:31 PM
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
If the Landlord agrees to end the lease early then the fee will be kept by the Landlord to help defray the costs to the Landlord caused by the early termination of the lease. If the Landlord does not agree to end the lease early then the fee will be refunded.That part right there may help you more than anything.I wouldn't mention this to said landlord, as they may return the money.
Message Edited by sidewinder on 07-21-2008 07:38 PM
That's my husband's thinking, too. They certainly cashed the thing very happily while (verbally) agreeing to us breaking the lease, and asking enthusiastically about how the house purchase etc was going every time our paths crossed after that. Y'know, going on about how 'exciting' it is, and such.
What worries me is that in the letter they sent today, they basically say this:
$25 for 'extra cleaning of bathroom' (I guess they're referring to the unshiftable mould between the tiles that we were never able to get rid of no matter what cleaning product we used)
$35 for carpet cleaning
xx amount for rent for July thru December
minus xx amount 'rent credit' (prepaid rent).
They then say 'as your security deposit was only $300, there is an outstanding balance of $$$$thousands' - followed by the 'pay up within 30 days or we're sending you to collections' part.
While they HAVE agreed to our breaking the lease, they have certainly not at any point 'rejected' our request to break it - plus they accepted the keys back, etc etc etc... but I'm wondering whether that 'rent credit' constitutes a 'refund' deductable off the balance for the rest of the year that they've decided we owe....?
That said, if they're taking that as 'prepaid rent' (which it clearly wasn't, and their own lease doesn't say anything of the sort)... then our rent must be current up until the end of July, and they surely have no business demanding rent for the rest of the year...?! If they're not agreeing to let us break the lease, shouldn't they have pointed this out when my husband returned the keys in the last week of June...? if they're not letting us break the lease, then at the very least we're current on the rent and they have no call to be threatening us with collections....? The only thing I can think is that they'd sneakily deliver something to the apartment (ie under the door rather than via USPS, so it wouldn't be redirected to us) after we'd already returned the keys saying 'oh by the way, we're not letting you break your lease'...?
Ugh. Thanks again (I reallyreallyreally appreciate this!) for the responses. I can't believe they'd be so low as to cheerfully agree to everything and then turn around and do this... or rather, I can probably believe that, but not that I was stupid enough to let it happen.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
If the Landlord agrees to end the lease early then the fee will be kept by the Landlord to help defray the costs to the Landlord caused by the early termination of the lease. If the Landlord does not agree to end the lease early then the fee will be refunded.That part right there may help you more than anything.I wouldn't mention this to said landlord, as they may return the money.
Message Edited by sidewinder on 07-21-2008 07:38 PM
Luckily, in her state, restrictive endorsements ARE legally binding. They're best enforced IF the check were accompanied by a formal written agreement, but it doesn't seem that it's necessary!
Congrats, Fem!! I think you're going to be fine!!!
FTR, the provision is Ohio Rev. Code 1303.40 (A)
Yannow ... just in case you decide to toss it in their faces.
After all, WHY in the world, if they DIDN'T agree to an EARLY termination of your lease, WHY, WHY, WHY would there BE an "inconvenience fee?" Right?!
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
If the Landlord agrees to end the lease early then the fee will be kept by the Landlord to help defray the costs to the Landlord caused by the early termination of the lease. If the Landlord does not agree to end the lease early then the fee will be refunded.That part right there may help you more than anything.I wouldn't mention this to said landlord, as they may return the money.
Message Edited by sidewinder on 07-21-2008 07:38 PM
Luckily, in her state, restrictive endorsements ARE legally binding. They're best enforced IF the check were accompanied by a formal written agreement, but it doesn't seem that it's necessary!
Congrats, Fem!! I think you're going to be fine!!!
FTR, the provision is Ohio Rev. Code 1303.40 (A)
Yannow ... just in case you decide to toss it in their faces.
After all, WHY in the world, if they DIDN'T agree to an EARLY termination of your lease, WHY, WHY, WHY would there BE an "inconvenience fee?" Right?!
Now THIS sounds promising... thankyouthankyouthankyou!!
Just to get my slow brain around this... 'restrictive endorsements' would be endorsing a check to say that it's payment to be used for a specific purpose... right? And so by cashing the check, they're acknowledging that that's what they're taking the payment for? Either that orrrr.... they're cashing a check they have no business to be cashing...?
I need to ask around at work tomorrow and see if anyone knows of any local lawyery types well versed in dealing with unpleasant landlords - hopefully we have at least some chance of getting them to back down on this before they charmingly turn us over to some scummy collection agency. I'm really NOT looking forward to having AmEx snatch away my cards and treat me like a criminal if this hits our CRs, but I fully expect that that's what'll happen if it does. Although I suppose compared to being taken to court, that'd be the least of our worries. UGH!
Again... thank you so, so much. I feel so stupid for NOT insisting on getting the agreement in writing - I think just having got a friendly verbal agreement from the property manager, and knowing how getting anything (copy of lease after original signing, setup of automatic payments amidst losing of voided checks, any kind of helpful response beyond 'it wasn't my fault, it was the company that does the payments!' when they double-billed everyone for their April rent.... to name a few examples) from or done by said property manager has always been like pulling teeth, I just thought that I could do without the frustration. Silly me - should never underestimate the capacity of people to turn around and do... stuff like that, if they think they can get away with it!
Wonderin... just reading up on that Ohio Rev. Code 1303.40 (A) - that is interesting stuff, THANK YOU!! Everything I'm seeing is talking about checks annotated as being for payment in full, but I'm hoping these articles are just very specific examples of cashing a check meaning you accept the endorsement...!
Again, thank you so much!
Again, thank you so much!