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Lease is in place with tenants paying rent plus utilities.
At the end of the original lease an extension was agreed upon through April 2013.
Lease break is covered as tenant responsible for rent until the end of the lease or until a new tenant can be found. Landlord to make good faith attempt to market property.
Notice of lease break was sent to landlord on 8/31/2012. House will be vacated 9/29/2012.
Lease runs through April. Who is responsible for utilities?
The lease states that tenant is responsible for rent through April unless house is sold or rented before. Utilities are not mentioned in the lease break language, only in the original lease.
Landlord believes tenant to be responsible for rent and utilities as agreed in original lease.
Tenant believes that they are no longer tenants once furniture is removed from the house on the 29th and while they agree they are responsible for rent, do not agree that they are responsible for utilities after the 29th.
Unless there is a new lease, the terms and conditions of the original lease still applies. However, your state law will say if an "extension" is valid and in what form, or if absent a new signed lease, it goes momth to month regardless of what agreement you both came to. So the tenant may or may not be responsible for the utitlites or they may only be responsib;e for 30 days, or... Read your state law (probably linked on the first sticky post at the top of this forum)
I agree with them. Once they vacate they're not responsible for utility bills and you should arrange with the utility companies to transfer the accounts to your name in order that there's no break in service. Consider yourself fortunate that they have in effect agreed that they're responsible for rent payments until the expiration of the lease term. Also be aware that if you don't rent out the house, they stop paying rent after a couple of months and you take them to court for the balance due, judges in general aren't inclined to award a landlord any more than one or two month's rent.
Next time around you might think of including a lease termination buy-out clause.
Landlord is responsible for utilities once the tenant vacates. Tenant should contact utility companies and tell them the cut off date. Landlord should contact utilities and get them changed to landlord's name.
If landlord doesn't want to pay utilities, leave them off. Such as cable and phone.
Also a hint, you can shut off the water heater at the breaker when the home is vacant. No need to heat the water if it's vacant.
You can also shut off the refrigerator and open the doors to keep it aired out.
Keep the HVAC off or set the temp so it hardly runs except to keep from freezing pipes in winter.
Interesting responses. I spoke to a real estate attorney friend (who will not be getting involved) just for info and he said it's absolutely clear cut.
The lease extension agreement states that the original lease is in full effect apart from the stated changes which means that the tenant is responsible for utilities until the end of the lease.
Strange that this can be interpreted so differently.
What the lease says and what a judge will do in small claims cout are often two completely different things. In my area, and many others, the "judge" in small-claims court isn't even a lawyer. A typical case in small-claims is a lot more like "judge Judy" than "LA law". The judge is often hurried and has no patience, and the law is an interesting factoid, but irrelevant for their purposes. Small claims judges seem to have an uncanny ability to rule the "wrong" way 50% of the time, and give a resolution that satisfies neither party the other 50% of the time.
That's just my opinion having represented my former employer in a half-dozen states, both as a plaintiff and a defendant. I'm not a lawyer & frankly, your lawyer may not actually know what goes on in small claims cases, as lawyers aren't even allowed there in many states.
We certainly don't want to go to court over a few hundred dollars per month but it is annoying.
I believe his ex company is picking up the rent payments for the lease break, but I guess not for utilities.
He makes (made) mega bucks so there was probably a huge golden handshake for him to leave as well. I find it irritating that we get left with a ton of additional expense when we've kept to the terms of the lease and now is not a good time for us to be incurring additional costs.
It makes very little sense for a tenant to cover utilities in the meantime. Many landlords take the time in between tenants to fix up a place - which means keeping the lights on, using equipment that uses electricity (ie. hardwood sanders, carpet cleaners, etc), and keeping the heat on for anyone working in the apartment or during showings. None of these costs are controllable to the old tenants once they vacate the property.
You should not be out hundreds of dollars a month. You've had a month's notice that the apartment was being vacated - I'm not sure what part of the country you live in, but in my urban area, that's more than enough time to find a new tenant.
When I was renting every lease I ever signed said that tenant was required to have utilities active in their name for lease duration or it is considered a breach of lease terms. This is also common in commercial leases. This allows one more avenue for getting them evicted if they stop paying the bills and move out in the middle of the night and covers your situation as well.
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