Is it legal for landlord to prohibit subleasing, under Texas law? It's quite common that plans change, and a residential lease must be broken. Of course, since one has agreed to pay the full price of the lease, they're on the hook for it, unless they can find someone else to help them mitigate the damages. However, the sublessee might only be interested in taking over a certain part of the lease (e.g., say, month 5, 6, 7 and 8 of a 12-month lease), and would not be interested in taking over the whole lease, thus having to find another lessee for months 9 to 12. Does the landlord have the right to refuse to mitigate tenant's damages to accommodate such an arrangement? In my experience, the corporate landlords always simply say &quot;we don't do subleasing, you can only take over the whole lease [and then deal with re-leasing]&quot;. But doesn't this violate the provision about damage mitigation? http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PR/htm/PR.91.htm Sec. 91.006. LANDLORD'S DUTY TO MITIGATE DAMAGES. (a) A landlord has a duty to mitigate damages if a tenant abandons the leased premises in violation of the lease. (b) A provision of a lease that purports to waive a right or to exempt a landlord from a liability or duty under this section is void. I was reading on UniformLaws.org that in certain situations and/or states, landlord's failure to mitigate damages is automatically grounds for contract termination (thus no rent or damages are further due), does it at all apply here? IV. What Are the Consequences of Landlord’s Failure to Mitigate? Jurisdictions have taken one of two approaches in handling the landlord’s failure to comply with the duty to mitigate. The current version of the URLTA provides that if the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts to mitigate, “the rental agreement is deemed to be terminated by the landlord as of the date the landlord has notice of the abandonment.” In effect, this provision precludes the landlord from recovering any damages past the date of the abandonment. About half of the jurisdictions that have URLTA-based statutes (AK, AZ, CT, IA, KS, KY, MT, OK, OR, RI, SC) have retained this provision in their statutes, while the other half (AL, FL, HI, MI, MS, NE, MN, TN, VA, WA) have omitted it. Nevada has a similar provision in its non-URLTA statute. If you're the original tenant, what recourse can you take? If you're a prospective sublessee, is the landlord at all obligated to put you in contact with the original tenant for you to potentially inform the original tenant of their rights, and, potentially, see if they're interested for a sublease instead? Anything else that can be done if you're already in contact with the original tenant?
Landlord-tenant law is an area that is heavily statute-based, jurisdiction-dependent, and far from uniform across the country. A complex, specific, multi-part question like this one is not going to get a simple answer. In general, though, I can clear up some of the confusion with a quick example. Let's say you abandon your lease, but as you do so, you write a letter to the landlord saying: "While I won't be living there any more, my friend's band needs a place to practice. They have agreed to pay half my rent if you let them play there 4 nights a week. They'll be starting on Tuesday at 11 PM: please have a set of keys waiting for them at the front desk." The landlord does not give your friends the keys. They re-key and clean the apartment and rent it two months later. Are you going to stand up in court and argue, with a straight face, that you should only be liable for half the rent for those two months because of the landlord's "failure to mitigate"? Again, jurisdictions differ, but the duty to mitigate is not absolute. If the landlord could rent out a $1,000/month apartment for $5 a month, it doesn't have to do that, and you can't make the Court take $5 a month off their damages if they refuse to do so. Also, you seem to be confused about what subleasing is. A sublessor owes duties to you; you still owe the duty to your landlord to get the rent paid. A sublease is an agreement between you and a third party to pay you rent. It does not affect your relationship with the landlord at all, unless it's a breach of your agreement with the landlord or of local law protecting the landlord from unauthorized subleasing.
Can I just not renew their contract and go back to my place in 2 months or do I still need to give them 6 months' notice? Short answer: 6 months' notice Long answer: I'm assuming this is a fixed-term Assured Shorthold Tenancy. Unless a landlord is going down the Section 8 route where the tenant has broken the tenancy agreement, they will need to serve a &quot;Section 21 Notice&quot; under the Housing Act 1988 requesting the tenant to leave a property. The Act has been amended to extend this notice period to 6 months, and any fixed-term tenancy that ends during that period will roll over to a periodic tenancy until the end of the notice period. This is the relevant extract from the government's website: Section 21 notices requiring possession of a property under an assured shorthold tenancy Landlords can only use a Section 21 notice to ask their tenants to leave their property: If the notice expires at or after the end of the fixed term. During a tenancy with no fixed end date - known as a ‘periodic’ tenancy. From 29 August 2020, a Section 21 notice must give tenants at least 6 months’ notice of the fact that the landlord requires possession. This give some more detail about s.21 Notices.
Inferring from the question, it appears that: The tenancy is an Assured Shorthold Tenancy. The tenancy agreement started on 16 December 2014. The initial fixed term was for 12 months. (Please comment below if any of this is incorrect). A Section 21 order gives notice that, unless the tenant leaves by the date given in the document, the landlord will begin legal proceedings against the tenant, in order to obtain a court order forcing the tenant to leave. To answer the OP's questions: Does it mean that she wants to use her right to cancel the contract after 2 months? It looks like that to me but I am not 100% sure. Yes - but if this is before the end of the fixed term (which I'm assuming is 15 December) there must be a clause in the tenancy agreement (normally called a "break clause") allowing the fixed term to be terminated early. If there is no break clause, then you cannot be asked to leave before the end of the fixed term. What does it mean "after 16/11/2015"? After can mean anything... even end of contract in December. Yes. The landlord would like you to leave before the date shown - but if you don't, the landlord can begin legal proceedings any time after that. Is this a legal document or just something she made up? It is a legal document. Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 allows a landlord to ask a tenant to leave without having to give a reason. The landlord must meet certain conditions in order for the notice to be valid. What happens if I want to leave the house later because I don't find alternative? You'll need to discuss that with the landlord. However, if you don't leave by the end of the fixed term, you are entitled to stay (and pay rent!) until a court (not the landlord) orders your eviction. EDIT: This website goes into a lot more detail about the whole Section 21 procedure.
Your rights and responsibilities in this realm are a matter of local law, sometimes down to the level of the city, plus whatever is stipulated in the lease. In San Francisco, for example, No Person shall have upon any premises or real property owned, occupied or controlled by him, or her, or it any public nuisance [which includes] Any visible or otherwise demonstrable mold or mildew in the interiors of any buildings or facilities This does not say whether the owner or the occupant is liable for remediating the situation. Shower mold is gross but not a health hazard (the SF ordinance just lumps all mold into one category). Since you have no written lease, there is no automatic clean-up requirement. There might be a law requiring a tenant to clean the premise to its original condition, for instance in Washington, tenant must Upon termination and vacation, restore the premises to their initial condition except for reasonable wear and tear or conditions caused by failure of the landlord to comply with his or her obligations under this chapter. Landlord duties are here: there is no duty to provide ventilation. However, the bathtub appears to be in a common area and not your particular unit. The landlord duties also require the landlord to Keep any shared or common areas reasonably clean, sanitary, and safe from defects increasing the hazards of fire or accident so in Washington, it's his problem and not yours. In general, even if a tenant is responsible for some form of cleanup, that does not constitute legal license for a facility upgrade. It might cost a couple hundred dollars to hire a person to wash ordinary mold accumulation, and does not justify getting a $5,000 new tub. Since this is in a common area, you would not be solely liable for whatever the damage was. The part where you say "crack in a common bath tub" is a large red flag: it suggests to me that somebody negligently broke the bathtub, and then caused behind-the-wall damage by letting water infiltrate without notifying the landlord. If you broke the tub and let it rot, you could be liable. If the tub was broken already and the landlord didn't bother to do anything about it, that is his negligence. The three questions that you should try to answer are: (1) what are the duties of landlord and tenant in my jurisdiction, (2) what was the actual harm done, and who did it, (3) what is the ordinary cost of whatever repair was done.
Is this charge legal in Georgia? No. It seems unlawful. First, it appears that the landlord was negligent and failed to mitigate damages. Since in general utilities are billed monthly, it is unreasonable for the landlord to have waited this long for a $2 charge that occurred on the first day of your tenancy. Second, legislation typically sets a deadline for a landlord to send a former tenant an itemized bill to cover for damages other than normal tear and wear. According to O.C.G.A. § 44-7-34(a), that deadline in Georgia is 30 days. Whereas the $2 charge is right (at least from a moral standpoint, as you mention), the $50 surcharge is devoid of merit.
If the tenant were alive, you couldn't stop them from taking away their personal property, could you? No matter how overdue the rent was. Nor could you deny them access to the property, except through formal eviction. AFAIK the estate generally has the same rights that the decedent did. So if the tenant would have had the right to remove their property, then their estate should have that same right. I'd be concerned about legal risks to you if you try to withhold it - I wouldn't want to do so without having advice from my lawyer that it was okay. (Answers on this site are not legal advice and most of the users are not even lawyers.) The decendent's personal property should now be part of their estate, so if it has any value, the representative should have to sell it if necessary to settle their debts. Thus even if you release the property, some of its value may still come back to you. Of course, if the decedent had other debts, and their assets don't cover them all, you may not be able to recover everything you're owed - that's one of the risks you run when you decide to become a landlord. In particular, the personal representative is not obligated to pay off the overdue rent out of her own pocket.
If a contract does not say what one of the parties wishes it would say, before signing it they should renegotiate the lease. Once the parties have an agreement as witnessed by signatures, a party cannot change the terms of the contract by declaring that some provision of the lease is a "typo". If they want to renegotiate the terms of the contract after the fact, they can, if the other party is willing to give in on the particular point. So as it stands, it seems that the landlord is in breach of contract. This section of Maryland's landlord-tenant law is relevant to this situation. (b) In general. -- A tenant may deduct from rent due to a landlord the amount of payments made to a utility service provider for utility service if: (1) An oral or written lease for an affected dwelling unit requires the landlord to pay the utility bill; and (2) (i) The tenant pays all or part of the utility bill, including payments made on a new utility service account; or (ii) The tenant pays any security deposit required to obtain a new utility service account. (c) Waiver not permitted. -- A tenant's rights under this section may not be waived in any lease. There is no provision under the law whereby the landlord can be penalized for the inconvenience that you've suffered. This section of the public utilities law addresses the problem of the landlord's debt, in particular: (c) If utility service at an affected dwelling unit is subject to the threat of termination or actual termination, a tenant residing in the affected dwelling unit: (1) may apply for a new utility service account in the tenant's name; and (2) may not incur liability for charges due on the landlord's account. In particular, (d)(3) says A utility service provider may not refuse or otherwise condition a tenant's ability to establish a new utility service account in the tenant's name because of arrearages on the landlord's account. So the utility company is wrong, and so is the landlord.
This all depends upon where you are. I am a landlord and I am answering based upon the laws of the U.S. and the states that I operate in. First things first. You are not the property owner. While this does not limit the answer, it is a factor. You do not have the right to the property even if you have a key and the permission of the tenant. You are not the property owner, do not represent the property owner nor the tenant, and by contract do not have legal rights to the apartment. It does put you in a different situation. As a landlord, it is against the law for me to provide access to a tenants apartment to anyone without authorization. This, of course, precludes emergencies such as welfare checks. In the case of the police, a warrant is required or a form that the police fill out that allows the police to gain access. This would be used in cases such as when a spouse requires the recovery of personal property during a domestic dispute. A judges order is not always possible in these cases. These are often limited cases and the form absolves the landlord of liability even in cases where the police act incorrectly. So without a warrant or a form that certifies any lawful request, anyone including the landlord can be arrested for a crime. For your situation, a quick call to the landlord would have been appropriate. Without a warrant or certification, the police still had options including waiting for the person in question to either leave or return to the apartment or even request a warrant by phone. Often, the warrant, once signed by the judge, can be read over the phone. Any landlord should always have a paper copy provided within minutes since some cruisers will have a printer and can print the warrant. Your refusal appears to be legal. However, in the future, you can ask for a copy of the warrant that you provide the landlord. I do not wish to paint a negative image of the police who do the hard work that most people will never take on, they are after all heros, however, some do not know the law perfectly well especially tenant landlord law. As well, some will try and get away with skirting the law trying to get an important job done. It does happen. I hired a lawyer just last week for an illegal request unrelated to the question here. Addressing the OPs comment: Hello, I believe I misstated the situation a bit in that the locked door in question was for the apartment building and not a tenet's apartment itself. I have edited my question. Does this change anything? Technically, this does not change much of anything, however, the request by the police can be seen as a reasonable one. They just may want to talk to the individual which is reasonable. In this case, I might have let them in if the access I was giving them was to a common space such as a hallway. In this case, the outer door locks are only to keep Intruders from entering the building and not meant to restrict access for valid purposes. Are you in trouble? I would say no. If anyone asks, you can give reasonable arguments for your situation. However, the next time, consider what I have written here. The police have a tough enough time doing their jobs. If you can help and stay within the proper boundaries of what the law allows, that would be best.