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Landlord Died After Lease Was Signed, Before Move-In Date

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  • 02-10-2007, 06:03 AM
    joeyjoey
    Landlord Died After Lease Was Signed, Before Move-In Date
    Hello everyone.
    We signed a lease about a month+ ago for a move-in date that's only a week away. At that time we also submitted our security deposit and payment for the first partial month of rent. All of our interactions were with a realtor who was acting on behalf of the owner.

    Today we get a call from the realtor saying that the owner has died, and the trust attourney says that they are going to sell immediately instead of lease. I'm not unsympathetic, but this is an enormous and costly inconvenience to us because we live in a difficult and expensive market (which is why I started looking 2 months ago) and we have already given notice to our current landlord that we've moving out.

    So my simple question is: Does whoever inherited the property have the right to sell now instead of allowing us to move in? I don't really want to force them to allow us to live there when we are unwanted, but I'd like to know what the law says before I speak to them because I was hoping we could come to some kind of mutual agreement where I'd allow them to break the lease in exchange for an agreed compensation amount. (We have no idea where we will live now so we may end up "doubling-up" on rent for a month, or in a hotel, plus our deposit to movers, future application fees, finding/listing fees, travel, time etc etc... no to mention we really loved the place and thought we had quite a deal.)

    There was no "early extermination" clause as far as I can tell. The only clause that even scares me is one on "Physical Possession", which says that the owner is not responsible for damages if unable to deliver the property on the move-in date. As it was explained to us, this is meant to entail the destruction of the physical property due to a fire etc, but I can see how the words could be twisted to say it entails the owner's existence as well. Is anyone familiar with this type of clause (this page of the lease was actually one meant for the purchase of homes, but was modified by the realtor to a tenant-owner agreement)???

    I'm pretty sure that whoever owns the property now could enforce the lease on us if they chose to do so, and it doesn't seem right that this should be a one-way street. Again, I'm sympathetic, but it doesn't seem right that we could be out so much time and money, which will be especially true if we cannot find a new place to live in the next week (which is very likely here). I also wish I knew if we were dealing with crushed children or greedy relatives of the deceased, but that's legally irrelevant.

    Any advice or knowledge to share? Thanks all.
  • 02-10-2007, 06:50 AM
    aaron
    Re: Landlord dies after lease signed, but before move-in date
    They can certainly sell the property. But at the same time, the buyer would normally take the property subject to your leasehold interest. Laws vary by state.
  • 02-10-2007, 08:07 AM
    joeyjoey
    Re: Landlord dies after lease signed, but before move-in date
    Interesting and good point, aaron.

    Of course, the real issue is that they want to effectively break the lease and not allow us to move in. I'm sure that even if the option of selling under the conditions of the leasehold was brought to their attention this would not appeal to them as they would not be ideal conditions for finding a condo buyer.

    So does the fact that we have not taken possession of the condo yet make any difference? I've been reading and am aware that the death of a landlord does not affect the terms of tenancy, but I wasn't sure if there would be some escape hole here for the new owner/heirs because we haven't taken possession yet.

    Aaron, your answer does seem to imply this but I'm wondering if you (or anyone else???) know it as fact. Thanks again.
  • 02-10-2007, 10:04 AM
    aaron
    Re: Landlord dies after lease signed, but before move-in date
    If they won't let you in, despite your having a signed lease agreement, you would have a claim against the estate for your damages. You may wish to consider what those damages would be, then trying to negotiate something in that ballpark as a "buyout price" to release the estate from the lease.
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