My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Maryland
My twelve month lease for my apartment specifies that I need to give 60 days notice (to not have the penalty of a month's rent) that I am leaving the apartment and that without any notice following the lease expiration my lease will be renewed on a month to month basis. I'd been thinking I only needed to give 30 day notice, and so I missed the 60 day deadline. By Maryland law I only need to give 30 day notice to vacate an apartment when renting on a month to month basis. I tried to give notice l'd be moviing out the first of December, but they said that since I was only giving 30 days notice rather than 60 days they said I would need to pay a penalty of a month's rent, which of course means that I might as well just give 60 days notice and move out in January. What I'm wondering is that since I only need 30 days notice to get out of a month to month lease, shouldn't I be able to move out in December with no penalty, since what I'm trying to stop is the activation of a monthly lease which will start in December, I'm not trying to break the 12 month lease which will expire on its own. To make this clearer: If I was on a monthly lease and decided on January 1st to vacate on February 1st, I'd be able to do it, preventing the start of a new monthly lease with just 30 days of notice. So why couldn't I end the monthly lease that will start up December 1st by giving 30 days notice on November 1st?

