California: Is there a grace period when signing an apartment lease? Let's say you sign a lease and move into the apartment and the 1st or 2nd night you discover there is a dance club next door that runs loud music until 2am. Is there any law that requires the landlord to let you out of the lease? My last apartment stated I had 3 days to cancel but I don't know if that was just a courtesy or a legal requirement. Other examples: You move in and discover that at 3am, 3 times a week, garbage collection arrives and very loudly picks up the metal trash containers and bangs them on the back of their trucks for 5–10 minutes. You move in and notice there's an industrial air conditioner on the building next door that runs 24/7 and that the windows in your apartment do not block the noise sufficiently. You didn't notice this when touring the apartment because ambient background noise in the day is much higher than at night. You move in didn't notice before there's a mosque 1/2 a block away that has loud calls to prayer 5 times a day or a Catholic church that rings its bells early on Sundays I guess what I'm asking is &quot;is there a cooling-off period&quot; for apartment leases.
Once I figured out the term I was looking for was &quot;cooling off period&quot; a google search led to this SFGate article which seems to say, no, there is no cooling off period in California. breaking a lease, even before moving into a new home, can be a legal challenge. If you must cancel a lease before moving in, be prepared for a financial loss and possible legal difficulties. And this article There is no &quot;cooling off&quot; period for residential releases. In some states, a cooling off period is required for certain contracts, which give signers a window of time, typically one to three days, during which they can void the contract if they change their mind. Unless such a condition is explicitly stated in the lease or there is a rare jurisdictional law that requires a cooling period, your lease is binding the second you sign your name. So, the answer to my question is &quot;No, there is no grace period&quot; and that my current apartment, with the 3 day exception was just a kind offer on their part. I'd just guess because they're a large firm (they run ~80k apartments) they've learned it's better to let people go if they change their mind in 3 days than go through the trouble of forcing them to honor the lease. Interestingly, and related IMO, there is also no cooling off period for car purchases. I thought there was which is why I thought there might also be one for apartments since, at least in California, many apartments yearly rent is more than the entire cost of a car. (avg in SF is $40k a year) But, at least in California, if it's a used car and if the car costs less than $40k, the dealer is required to offer you the option to purchase a 2-day cancellation clause for around 1% of the car's price.
B and C have a contract with A In return for paying 3 months rent, B and C will remove A from the lease. This has all the required elements to be a contract. B and C have fulfilled their obligations and A hasn’t. B &amp; C could sue A for damages. They would need to prove that there was such an agreement and that they agreement was a legally binding contract. Is this agreement written down? Was it witnessed by impartial third parties? What evidence of this agreement do you actually have? If A says they agreed to X, yet B &amp; C say they agreed to Y: what evidence exists to show who is right and who is wrong? Failing to fulfill the obligations of a contract is not fraud. For there to be fraud, B &amp; C would have to prove that A never intended to comply by the terms of the agreement. Given that the terms of the agreement are somewhat ambiguous, this would be very difficult. This seems to be more of a case where [Hanlon's Razor]: &quot;Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.&quot; That is, A's actions are more likely to be the result of a misunderstanding (by A, or B &amp; C, or both) than a deliberate plan of deception. The landlord is not involved - they removed A from the lease at the request of A, B &amp; C; they’ve done what they’re required to do.
If you buy a house, you can generally rent out a room in the house, unless in that jurisdiction there is some law against renting rooms in houses (that's actually a condition in my neighborhood, one widely ignored). If it's legal to rent (lease) a room, it is generally legal to sub-lease that room – as long as that's allowed under the original lease contract. I have never heard of a jurisdiction that has a blanket prohibition against subleases. So as far as the actual question goes, the answer is, "yes". The links are about something a different, namely rent control law in San Francisco, and the question of whether a tenant can be evicted from a rent-controlled unit because the owner wants to move in to the unit. Owner move-in eviction requires a specific procedure for giving notice, and the links are about these requirements. Conceivably, though, the question could be whether a person can buy a house that is being rented out, do a proper owner move-in eviction, and then lease a spare room. The SF rent laws require a good faith intent to move in and use as the primary residence for 3 years, and nothing prohibit subsequently leasing a room. Those laws pertain to evictions, not re-rentals. (It should be noted that once eviction under section 37.9(a)(8) has been carried out on a unit in a building, no other unit in the building can ever be so recovered. That could mean that the room in the house could never again be recovered, if it is considered to be a separate "unit" from the "unit" that is the whole house).
In the lease agreement we stipulated that rent would be 50% off until the building received full services and then the full rent payment would be due. Ouch. I bet the lease agreement also says something like &quot;no other agreements verbal or otherwise are in effect for this agreement.&quot; So what you did was release the landlord from the responsibility to make the building habitable. Pretty sure you will need a lawyer to unwind this.
In Texas, if the lease states that the landlord can inter for some purpose, the landlord can enter for that purpose. I assume there is no statement in the lease. Then the landlord has no right to enter except in emergencies and for routine inspections or repair. This right, however, stems from the courts and not statutes, and you could theoretically sue the landlord to prevent such an inspection (you would need a good attorney, to overcome the presumption that reasonable routine inspections with notice are allowed).
If you began the lease with no mention of additional payment specifically for parking, and were of the understanding that you could use the property to park cars, and have been using the property to park cars with the knowledge of the landlord, and the landlord has not previously mentioned parking as a distinct part of your lease that carries a fee, you have a very strong argument that parking cars on the property was part of your leasing the property. People park cars on their property regularly; it is a reasonable default assumption that unless told otherwise, you could do this at will. The landlord presumably knew you had been doing this and had not notified you that e.g. it was against an explicit part of the lease or was against a legal regulation to park cars on that property without a fee paid. This is a request for additional payment for something you are currently able to do for free, and doing as part of an existing contract. Therefore, your landlord is offering a change to your lease: the rent will go up by thirty dollars or you will be barred from parking cars on the property. In neither case do you receive additional consideration, so it may not be a legitimate change at all. Regardless though, you do not have to accept the false dichotomy: you can choose to continue parking your car on the property and not pay the money for doing this. Do not agree to the change. Do not pay any additional money. See a lawyer that specialises in tenancy law for your jurisdiction and obtain their opinion before replying to the demand for a change in the terms of your lease; you may have access to free legal advice depending on where you live.
I assume the lease does not clarify what the effective date for cancellation of utilities should be: when you "officially abandon" the property, or when the 30-day notice elapses. Who is responsible for the damage? At least under a principle of equity, the landlord is responsible for the damages. That is because, once you have returned the keys and officially abandoned the property, you have no control on how or whether utilities are consumed or (ab-)used thereafter. For instance, if sometime after the 30th of July a person breaks in that rental unit and extracts tremendous quantities of power or gas, that would lead to the inequitable outcome that the utilities company would charge you if your name is still in the utilities company's records. Similarly, it would be unreasonable and inequitable to expect you to essentially insure the landlord (by keeping your name on the utilities) despite his full awareness that you no longer are there.
No, you don't need to physically be there. The landlord may be required to refund some rent if they rent it out early. They may also not be available for a walk through until your last day, so you may need to show back up. Technically if you pay rent for the month the apartment is yours until July 3. You can turn the keys in early.