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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    2

    Default Landlord Broke Lease Agreement

    My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Missouri

    I signed the lease with two friends June 1st 2010. It was a 12 month lease. About December time, these two roommates both want to go their separate ways, so I find two new roommates. The landlord agrees to let them move in, and they sign a new lease with me that goes until June 1st of 2011.

    The landlord says that because the first two people moved out, they for fitted their share of the deposit (217$ each). She says that the two new people do not have to pay a deposit.

    The rent is 650 a month. Split three ways, that's 217$. We paid our rent, except for one roommate who neglected to pay his rent for the last two months of the lease. He actually ended up packing his stuff and leaving while the other roommate and I were gone. We have yet to hear from him.

    Anyway, the landlord gets mad and says that we have to be out by May 15th, but she does not inform me of this. My stuff is already out, I found another place to live. However, the landlord never informed me of this agreement between her and the other roommate. So, I paid full months rent and he only got to live there for 15 days. She kicked him out 15 days before the lease was up.

    She also allowed the new tenants to put their stuff in the apartment on the seventeenth. So, did she break the lease agreement? Are we entitled to half of the rent, considering she only let him stay there for half of the month? Should we even have had to pay rent because she let the new tenants put their stuff in the apartment before the lease was up?

    All of this was done without my permission. She even demanded that I go over there and clean the apartment or she would take pictures and take me to court. I cleaned it.

    While I was there cleaning (seventeenth of May), I noticed that the garage was full of the new tenants stuff and a puppy. There were painters coming in and out, and there were carpet cleaning people.

    No one bothered to ask me about any of this, and my name is on the lease. Am I entitled to half the rent back?

    Also, I have asked her twice now for a list of everything she spent the deposit on including receipts. I have yet to get it. I told her today that if I do not get half the rent and the remaining deposit back, I will take her to court. She told me to do whatever I half to do.

    Am I in the right here? I mean, should I have had to pay for an entire month if we were not able to use the apartment for the entire month? Especially since the new tenants had their stuff in there by the seventeenth?

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Landlord Broke Lease Agreement

    Quote Quoting Jordan983
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    Anyway, the landlord gets mad and says that we have to be out by May 15th, but she does not inform me of this. My stuff is already out, I found another place to live. However, the landlord never informed me of this agreement between her and the other roommate. So, I paid full months rent and he only got to live there for 15 days. She kicked him out 15 days before the lease was up.
    You need to do a better job explaining what this is about. Is it that you had moved out, the rent wasn't fully paid, the remaining tenants agreed to be out by a specific date, and you're upset because you found somebody to replace you as a roommate without discussing what was going on with or seeking approval from either your landlord or your other roommates, and now you're stuck having to reimburse him for some of the money you took from him?
    Quote Quoting Jordan983
    She also allowed the new tenants to put their stuff in the apartment on the seventeenth. So, did she break the lease agreement?
    I thought you just told us that your roommates agreed to vacate by an agreed date because you and they failed to pay the full rent. If her actions were consistent with the agreement, then they were consistent with the agreement. You tell us.
    Quote Quoting Jordan983
    No one bothered to ask me about any of this, and my name is on the lease. Am I entitled to half the rent back?
    I am not in a position to evaluate whether you might have a claim against your landlord or former roommates based upon the combined result of your failure to communicate with your landlord or co-tenants, particularly after you learned that the rent was not paid in full, or their failure to communicate with you following the notice to quit and their agreement to vacate. It doesn't even appear from what you've told us that the rent was ever paid in full following your roommate's default, so I'm not sure what "half" would be due back.
    Quote Quoting Jordan983
    Also, I have asked her twice now for a list of everything she spent the deposit on including receipts. I have yet to get it. I told her today that if I do not get half the rent and the remaining deposit back, I will take her to court. She told me to do whatever I half to do.
    If your landlord does not follow your state's security deposit laws and owes you money, by all means take her to court.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2011
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    2

    Default Re: Landlord Broke Lease Agreement

    Thank you for responding.

    There is no quarrel between me and my previous roommates.

    This is the text message the landlord sent my previous roommate:

    "You need to be out of the apartment and have it cleaned by the fifteenth since I am only getting half the months rent. I expect you to pay half the months rent, or I'll take you and Jordan to court for the rest"

    This was never communicated to me. Also, I have no idea where she got this half the rent stuff, because I paid the other half of the rent. No one informed me of anything about the 15th thing. She basically lied, had him out by the fifteenth, and let new tenants move into the apartment.

    As far as I am concerned, she did not get an agreement from all of the lease holders. She got it from one, and he did not communicate it to the rest of us. We paid a full months rent for half a month.

    Am I entitled to half the rent back?

    We saved the text messages, just in case I did have to take her to court.

    I also asked her to mail me the copy of the first lease agreement I signed, a copy of the second lease agreement I signed, and the deposit invoice with all of the receipts.

    She has yet to do this. Does she have to mail it to me if I give her my forwarding address?

    This is her first apartment that she owns, and we were only her second tenants. She's not doing things by the book, I know that. I just want to prove it and take her to court to get what's owed to me.

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