Can You Make Your Landlord Renew or Extend a Lease
A month before the lease was going to expire, a landlord instructed a tenant that the lease was not going to be renewed. The landlord also served a 30-day notice to quit, instructing the tenant to be out by the end of the month. The tenant will suffer serious difficulty moving within a month and wants to stay longer. Is there any way under Michigan law to stay beyond the end of the month?
Re: Can You Make Your Landlord Renew or Extend a Lease
The tenant should start by checking the lease to see if it includes an automatic renewal provision and, if so, whether it requires more than a month's notice to prevent renewal. Sometimes the notice period is two months or sixty days, and if that's the case the landlord may be too late to end the tenancy.
Assuming that the lease does not automatically renew, the tenant should try to negotiate for an extension with the landlord. The landlord cannot summarily remove the tenant at the end of the month, but must file an eviction action in court -- which will likely take three to six weeks to complete, normally followed by a ten-day delay before an order of eviction is executed. The landlord may prefer to have an agreed move-out date, rather than having to go through that process. The tenant must be careful, though, as the tenant does not want an eviction lawsuit on his or her credit report, even if it's ultimately dismissed.