Breaking the Lease Prior to Moving in
My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: California. On Oct 21st, I had couple sign a lease agreeing to a 3 year rental contract. The couple read and initialed each page of the lease. No deposit has been collected. They agreed to move in Nov. 1st, 2009. A day later, Oct 22, the couple is backing out. What can I do?
Secondly, its a three year lease and I doubt I can find someone comparable. I can at most find 1 year leases...How can I recover damages for not being able to sign a long term lease?
Re: Breaking the Lease Prior to Moving in
If you can find other tenants, such that the premises aren't unoccupied, you aren't going to be successful in claiming damages based upon the leases being successive one year leases as opposed to a single three-year lease. But if there are periods when the premises are unoccupied due to the unavailability of suitable tenants during the three year period (or where due to changes in the market you have to rent at a lower rate) you may have a claim against these tenants for the difference in rent collected resulting from their breaking the lease - but you should expect that you'll only be able to bring one lawsuit to recover any damages.
(I'm assuming that the lease is signed and binding, and that the tenants have no defenses associated with either the execution of the lease or its content.)