Landlord Wants to Break Lease Before Move in Date
A group of 5 people, including myself, signed a lease for a house in Portland, Oregon about 2 weeks ago. We also paid a "move in" deposit. The lease does not start until May 2011. Now the landlord wants to void our contract because the current tenants decided they wanted to extend their lease from 1 year to 2 years. She claims that our contract was not "set in stone" because she didn't deposit our checks for the "move in" fee yet, even though part of the fee was paid in cash. Is this legal? Can my party do anything about this?
Re: Landlord Wants to Break Lease Before Move in Date
The options that occur to me are to hire a lawyer, pay the lawyer a ton of money, and file a lawsuit to enforce the lease; or to look for a different place to rent. If you do the latter you can either forget about this experience and move on with your lives (assuming you get a full refund), or you can see if your new premises cost more despite being comparable and, if so, attempt to sue the landlord for the additional rent you're paying for the equivalent premises. (And I'm not promising that you would win such a suit.)