We are in the process of finally moving into our new forever home. Our lease is for 1 year, starting July 20th and ending July 20th. We live in a very hot rental market and will be moving 2,000 miles away. Our home closure date is May 1st.
We told him of all of this upon our signing of the lease, well in advance, and he swore he would break the lease with zero issues. We said that we are currently selling our starter home and looking for our forever home. He was obviously okay with us closing out our lease early, but there is no mention of it in the lease itself. (Our family knows his family, and his family is extremely rich/owns the entire local town.)
We told the landlord we would be moving a little over 30 days before we move out. We are going to pay for May even though we will be gone by April 25th, just to make sure that the cleaners and carpet cleaners can get into the house after we leave. We have family in the area that will be monitoring the clean-up for us. We will also be cleaning as we slowly pack things into the moving truck. The cleaners alone will be close to $500 upon move out, as we live really far away from a real town. We have them set up to come in before May 1st. So, really, we are paying May just to keep him happy and to be nice.
The landlord is not happy. We are their first tenants in this house, after his nephew lived here and destroyed it - which we cleaned up/helped fix before move in. He wants us to pay all of the rent until end of July. That is 2 additional months (3 if you count us paying for May) that we will have to pay, and equals about $2,000 ($3,000 with us paying for May).
He has also made some comments about the house being "brand new" upon our move out. Yet, it was hardly brand when we moved in. In this area, landlords almost always keep security deposit. We assumed we would never get it back, anyways, and took that into account. He's the type that basically would charge for any little nick in the paint and over charge for it. I'm a little tired of repainting walls (etc), to appease his final move-out. We have been keeping this house in tip top shape, but he visited without warning - again - yesterday, and was complaining about the red clay on the back porch which just needs to be washed off. (This is a habit of his, we get a text message he will be here and he's actually texting from the drive way or the backyard looking into our windows. We've had zero privacy here, such as the nephew showing up randomly, him showing up, and the neighbor's constantly doing things with the cows next door while using our driveway.)
He also said that we are going to be the ones finding a new renter. I flat out denied us doing this for him, and explained that his house would rent really quickly if he listed it. This is absolutely true, if he actually looked for a renter himself. I also think this is not our responsibility, and while our families know each other (welcome to the south!)...we think if he found a new renter, that he would still be charging us rent without us really knowing someone else was in the house. So, he'd be getting income from two sources. We're not sure why he wouldn't want to look for a renter himself, as that is in his benefit, and we're not sure why he is forcing us to keep the entire lease when I am absolutely sure he can get another renter really quickly (school year is ending, and lots of people - thousands - are constantly viewing for rentals in this area around now).
For the final pièce de résistance, he said that he wanted us to leave our (really nice) appliances in the house that we have had for about 2 years. We're talking stainless steel fridge, our lawnmower, our washer and dryer. The house came with none of these, and he was lucky we had some to use. He offered us (for example) $500 for our stainless steel fridge, $75 for our washer and $75 for our dryer. He wants the lawnmower for free. Mind you, these appliances aren't even 3 years old yet. He claims to want to keep them in the house for other potential tenants, but he is lowballing the hell out of us on them. We want to take them with us, but if we are in a poor financial state - we might sell them to him (though we really don't want to).
He's also been complaining lately that he did not charge us enough rent. Admittedly, it was a bit low but not by much ~$50, and did not include any appliances and a ton of up-keep of the property. The way he mentioned it made me feel like he didn't want us to slowly start saving up for a down payment on a house (we already had the money from our sale). It was like he was admitting to try to "trap us" in this house for longer than we wanted to. Really nastily said, and you can tell he is bitter than we are moving on/not giving him any more money in the future.
We are now concerned that he will not only keep the $1,500 security deposit but is also getting additional rent from us ($2k-$3k), wants us to find a new tenant (??), and wants to keep our appliances we bought for extremely low prices. This is around $5,000 we will be losing because of him, not counting the appliances.
Is there anything we can do? We are verging on just paying the additional two months, losing our security, and getting out of dodge as soon as possible.
Edit: This is in Georgia. To be fair, we understood that he might need a bit of time to find another renter...which is another reason that we wanted to pay for May. However, he wants us to pay for May, June, and July...and basically wait until the end of the lease to find a renter instead. He absolutely does not want to do his due diligence to find another renter until absolutely necessary. It should not take 3 months to find a new renter, at all.
Submitted March 30, 2017 at 11:43PM by meowsalot22 http://ift.tt/2mTmPKh RealEstate
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