Is a 2% late fee for paying rent 20 minutes late (5:20pm) enforceable? My apartment manager is charging me a late fee for failing to turn in the rent check by 5pm on the first. I live in Los Angeles. I don't have a copy of my lease on hand, but this sounds ridiculous even if it's in the lease is it legal? *****UPDATE***** According to nolo "Under California law, a late fee will be enforced only if the fee is a reasonable estimate of the amount that the lateness of the payment will cost the landlord, and if specified language is include in a written lease or rental agreement." Unfortuneately there's no citation to the source, but if this website is correct, then the landlord must show cost (harm) before imposing a late fee, even if specified language (on the first by 5pm) is included in the lease. I paid twenty minutes late: the check was given to the property manager while she was in the office Are there any specific cases that anyone here knows of?
If the landlord has a right to charge a late fee (and that late fee is not a penalty) then that right accrues from the instant that the rent is late i.e. any time after 5:00:00 pm precisely if that is the time stated in the lease. If only a day is stated then it would be midnight. For case law on the penalty doctrine see PACIOCCO &amp; ANOR v AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND BANKING GROUP LIMITED [2016] HCA 28 which involved a challenge to a bank charging late payment fees on credit cards.
A "land contract" is not a way of renting property, it is a way of purchasing property on an installment basis without bank financing. It is Ohio's version of what in some other places is known as "contract for deed". See "What is a Land Contract in Ohio" and "How Land Contracts Work" The actual law is Section 5313. In a land contract, the buyer has equitable but not legal title. The buyer normally pays all taxes and fees, and is responsible for maintaining the property, just as if s/he has bought the property. But if the buyer defaults, all payments and equity would be forfeit to the seller. Until the buyer has paid 20% of the purchase price, or made 5 years of payments (whichever comes first) a single missed payment constitutes default and can lead to the buyer being evicted with all payments to date going to the seller, the buyer coming out of the deal with nothing. Also, if the seller still has a mortgage and defaults, the buyer may lose everything paid to date. The buyer does not have the protections that a lease gives a tenant, nor the protections that legal title gives a purchaser via a traditional mortgage. Land contracts are often used when the buyer cannot qualify for a mortgage. The buyer pays interest, and it is often at a higher rate than the current rate on a mortgage. Land contracts are often a form of predatory lending, but for some buyers they make sense. A buyer needs to carefully review the contract with a lawyer knowledgeable about land contracts, and consider the risks and benefits of this form of financing. As I understand it, there cannot be a valid land contract for one apartment in an apartment building. A land contract must be for title to the land and all fixtures, including all buildings, on it. (There was at one point some unclarity if the question referred to an apartment. It is now clear that it refers to a house, so this statement is not relevant to the OP, but may be to others.) It is not clear just what the OP's landlord (LL) has in mind. It may be that LL plans to offer a "land contract" in which the purchase would be completed only after a very long time, with the idea that the OP would simply default when s/he wanted to move. Such a default could harm the OP's credit. There seems no benefit to the OP in such a scheme compared to a lease, unless LL will lower the price significantly, taking into account maintenance costs and taxes, which OP may well be expected to pay under a land contract. Note that a landlord can't legally force a tenant to sign a document cancelling a lease, or to sign whatever s/he will call a "land contract". Nor can s/he cancel the lease without the tenant's consent except for good cause as specified in the law (such as not paying rent). S/He could become uncooperative on other matters if a tenant doesn't do as s/he wants. If a tenant does cancel his or her lease, s/he will lose some rights. Others are guaranteed by law as long as the tenant is paying rent. If one signs a "land contract", what happens depends on its provisions. OP needs to very carefully consider just what is being offered, and its risks and any possible benefits. Details of the contract will matter. No matter exactly what LL has in mind, this is not at all a usual procedure for a landlord. OP or anyone in a similar circumstance should be very careful.
You have a contract - if you break it, you can be sued. A contract is a legally binding promise that the state (through its courts) will enforce. You promised to pay the deposit - you must pay the deposit. You promised to pay rent on a regular basis for the period of the lease - you must pay that rent. You don't want to live there? Fine, the lease probably doesn't require you to. So long as you keep paying the rent, you don't have to. If you break the lease, then the landlord can sue you for the damage that they suffer - this is typically the value of the rent until they can find a new tenant and if that tenant is paying less than you, the difference between that amount and your rent for the balance of the lease. If you want to renegotiate the contract (for example, to end it early), you will need to ask your landlord but they are under no legal obligation to release you from it. They may be willing to do so out of the goodness of their heart and/or if you pay them.
Am I at fault? Can I get my security deposit back from Landlord? The landlord is wrong, and he should reimburse you the totality of the security deposit. Clauses #1 and #16 would entitle the landlord to deduct from your security deposit only the portion of the 7-day period that is not already covered in the payment you made for 1st week's rent, which according to clause #1 starts on Sunday July 29. If I understand correctly, you signed the contract (and paid) on July 27, and then gave your 7-day notice on July 28. Since you paid an additional amount for Saturday July 28, then your 1st week's rent payment actually covers the entire 7-day period of your notice. Therefore, the landlord should reimburse you the entire security deposit. The contract nowhere indicates that the count of [post-notice] 7 days starts after the current rent-week elapses. But even if it did contain language in that sense, the dates you mention render that hypothetical clause void. Lastly, clause #16 refers to giving a written notice, which is what you did by sending him the text he obviously read and understood. Therefore, his statement that "you did not provide proper notice of moving out" clearly is false. What should I do? If the landlord insists to retain the security deposit, your option is to file a complaint in Small Claims court (I don't know whether this has a different name in PA). Depending on PA procedural law, you and the landlord might be cited for mediation prior to being assigned a court date. A process in small claims court is pretty straight-forward, but only you can determine whether the hassle of attending mediation and court hearing is worth. If anything, it (1) certainly gives you some [minimal] exposure to litigation, and (2) teaches the landlord to abide by the very rules he drafted in the contract. 8/30/2018: Edited to address OP's follow-up question of whether section 250.512 of the Landlord and Tenant Act precludes recovery of security deposit (see comments) After analyzing the statute you found, Pennsylvania courts have still held that a tenant's failure to provide a new address does not preclude recovery of the security deposit. See Adamsky v. Picknick, 412 Pa.Super.Ct. 544, 549 (1992): we find the lack of notice argument is tenuous at best since appellant's reason for withholding the deposit was not because he did not have appellees' new address, rather, he withheld it because he maintained there were damages for which he should be compensated. That conclusion is squarely applicable to your situation. The landlord's only pretext for withholding your deposit is his inaccurate statement that "you did not provide proper notice of moving out", and for that matter he refers to nothing else than the rental agreement. The rental agreement nowhere requires you to provide your new address. One decision that does not constitute legal precedent but still might help persuading Small Claims court in your situation is Back v. Taylor, 19 D. &amp; C. 3d 606, 609 (1980). After citing section 250.512(e) of the Landlord and Tenant Act, the court states: That section sets forth certain guidelines as to when tenants can obtain double recovery. Defendants have only sought recovery of the deposit and therefore, the above cited section does not apply. (emphasis in original) Unless you were pursuing double recovery (see item (c) of the statute), it would be very questionable --to say the least-- why a [Small Claims] court should decide your dispute any differently than in Back. Another non-precedential decision analyzing the same statute is Shoemaker v. Henry, 35 D. &amp; C. 206, 209 (1984). Also in the context of double damages, the court stated: We cannot believe the only purpose [to require a tenant to provide his new address] was a negative one, that is, to cancel a right to double damages for failure to comply. A more rational explanation is that its purpose was to provide a landlord with an address to which the damage list could be sent. (brackets added) The statute apparently was enacted well before the prevalence of electronic communications. If your landlord has any way to send you a "damage list" (as it seems to be the case insofar as he replied to your text), then the rationale in Shoemaker should apply in your situation. If you are not even pursuing double recovery, then it would be unavailing for the landlord to cling to the language in item (e) of that statute. Therefore, you are definitely entitled to your deposit even if you did not provide to the landlord a new address. It is up to you whether you want to go for double damages, in which case the decision in Shoemaker might or might not be persuasive in Small Claims court. Beyond that, the Adamsky opinion constitutes legal precedent which favors your position.
The government of California has an extensive manual that says what you can and cannot do. To terminate a lease (a rental agreement for a year is a lease), there would have to be just cause for eviction (p. 65), such as failing to pay rent, violating terms of the agreement, cockfighting, and so on, and that does not include being a pain in the neck. Nor would the need to make repairs justify terminating a lease. On p. 79 they clarify that retaliatory eviction for exercising their legal rights is prohibited per California Civil Code 1942.5, and will result in fines. P. 35 ff. covers landlords entering: you may enter to make repairs, but must give 24 hour written notice (6 days if mailed), entering between 8am and 5pm business days, but you can also arrive at alternative times orally. If the local code-enforcers require you to do some modifications on the property, that is a separate matter and does not create a just cause for terminating the lease. For instance, if the electric service is not properly grounded and they require you to fix that, that does not constitute the structure "being destroyed". If the repairs make the building actually and certifiably uninhabitable, you might be on the hook for finding lodging for the tenant for the period of the repairs, so ask your attorney about that. Assuming that the tenant is not somehow responsible for the problem being repaired, then you will almost certainly have to keep the person for the duration of the lease.
Is there any way I can persuade the new landlord to start renting apartment as close as possible to the end of 30-day period? If you already signed a contract with the "immediate move-in" clause, it is going to be difficult to persuade the new landlord. That is because the landlord would have no incentive to postpone his source of income and there is no statute or legal provision available to you on that. If you have not signed the contract, then you two can still negotiate until either party leaves or you reach an agreement. Under contract law, the latter is referred to as knowingly and willfully entering a contract.
Is this legal for the county to enforce? Yes. And can I sue if they try to enforce it? You could, but you would very likely lose your lawsuit. A more fruitful approach would be to go to the county planning board and seek a variance to permit you to do what you want to do.
The relevant part of Texas law is in the property code, §§92.101-92.109 §92.104 allows them to "deduct from the deposit damages and charges for which the tenant is legally liable under the lease or as a result of breaching the lease", and then they must "give to the tenant the balance of the security deposit, if any, together with a written description and itemized list of all deductions" (except when there is uncontroversial rent owed). §92.109 states what the landlord's liability is, namely a landlord who in bad faith retains a security deposit in violation of this subchapter is liable for an amount equal to the sum of $100, three times the portion of the deposit wrongfully withheld, and the tenant's reasonable attorney's fees in a suit to recover the deposit. This requires bad faith, not just being wrong. If you dispute the deductions, you can sue the landlord to recover the deposit. The law also provides that "In an action brought by a tenant under this subchapter, the landlord has the burden of proving that the retention of any portion of the security deposit was reasonable". In order to extract more money from you for putative damages, the landlord will have to sue you and establish that there was an additional $2,000 damages. If the court finds that you did actually did damage the apartment, you may be ordered to compensate the landlord. Until you get such an order, you don't owe them anything; you may be able to recover the damage deposit if the "damage" was insignificant. This sketches the process of suing in Justice Court to get your deposit back, highlighting details like the demand letter that you might not have known you have to write. As far as your credit history is concerned, this is not entirely clear. The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates the industry of credit reporting, and crucially you can dispute false claims of debts. This does not prevent a person from making such a claim. I do not have an account with the Big 3 reporting services, so I don't know what their standards are for recording a putative debt. However, you can insert a suitable statement in your record disputing the validity of the claim. It is most likely that the landlord would sell the putative debt to a collection agency. That industry is regulated by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and there is a procedure about disputing an alleged debt.