Landlord demands early renewal of lease. What should I do?
March 17, 2015 11:39 AM   Subscribe

The lease on my house begins in August. The property management company has issued repeated emails last month -- and then last week a demand in writing -- that I renew the lease immediately (mid-March). Can they do this, or is it a bluff? The problem is that rental properties in this area come on the market May - July, so if they coerce a signature out of me now, I can't effectively search for other housing.

There are a lot of reasons I'd prefer to postpone a decision until I get a chance to see what else may be available nearby, but the main issue is that the rent is high for the area, and the house itself has various problems. However, we are well-settled here, and if nothing else is available, we would prefer to stay. The property manager's strategy appears to be to prevent us from looking around. I'm afraid that if I stall (in order to look at other rentals when they become available in late spring), but eventually decide to stay here, the company will raise the rent, which is problematic because the rent is already as high as we feel anyone should be willing to pay for the place.

I would like to know whether I have to dance to their tune, or if there's some kind of bluff involved. Alternatively, if this is all normal, above-board strategizing by a property management company, how can I negotiate effectively?

(This is in Arizona.)
posted by Maximian to Law & Government (21 answers total)
 
Your lease should describe the amount of advance notice you're required to provide if you plan to renew or move out. 60 days is typical (but not implied -- you're going to have to look at your lease).
posted by telegraph at 11:43 AM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


When you say they're demanding that you renew now, are they saying that if you don't they'll lease it to someone else in August? Renew now or what?
posted by craven_morhead at 11:44 AM on March 17, 2015 [4 favorites]


My leasing company (in Massachusetts) used to routinely ask us to sign our new lease in February, for a lease that started in September. They can't make you leave, but they can choose not to renew your lease if you won't commit way ahead of time.

If you think they're bluffing you can indeed call their bluff, and say you're not ready to sign, and see if they start showing the place. In my case, when we eventually gave up the lease, they did indeed have someone lined up within a month, four or five months before the beginning of the lease.
posted by mskyle at 11:46 AM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is fairly typical in the neighborhoods in Austin highly populated by students. If a renter doesn't re-sign in the spring semester, the leasing company will rent the apartment out from under them. It's legal here, if not dickish.
posted by donajo at 11:52 AM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've lived in at least ten rentals in Arizona and never experienced this; agreeing that it should state length of notice you are required to give in your lease. However, if you wait and then they want to raise the rent you're going to be out of luck because they are allowed to do that. I would hold off and try to move frankly.
posted by celtalitha at 11:59 AM on March 17, 2015


I've lived in several apartments in four different states (albeit none of those were Arizona) and I have NEVER had this happen, including when I was in a high-demand, high-turnover college town.

Your lease should state in writing how much advance notice you're required to give. They can ASK you to renew now, but they cannot DEMAND that you do. If they do, I suggest you vote with your feet and your wallet and move elsewhere.
posted by tckma at 12:10 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Entirely normal in Ann Arbor, circa 15 years ago, granting that the rental market there was messed up.
posted by Shmuel510 at 12:13 PM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


They (and you) are allowed to negotiate the next lease anytime before the current one expires.

When I lived in Madison, WI - a place known for it's tight rental market - landlords were already signing people in January for a lease in August. In fact, odds were pretty good that if you didn't have a lease by April/May, the pickings would be slim. I moved there in June and had a hell of a time finding a place - and settled for a pretty crappy flat.

This was a real contrast to how it worked in less active markets where it felt like I had more of a choice.

So, the answer is - it depends. In your situation, I'd be looking now for a new place. If the market is that active, the good one2 will go quickly.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:24 PM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm noticing a common thread here... Are you in a college-y town/neighborhood? Because I think that's where this tactic works the best for landlords, because everyone is looking for places at the same time of year.
posted by mskyle at 12:38 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah this is totally a local thing. I had to sign my resign my lease in November 2014 for a August 2015 renewal date. Of course I didn't HAVE to, but if I didn't they would begin showing my apartment and wouldn't necessarily guarantee that I could keep it. It's up to you to decide whether or not that risk is acceptable. I wasn't facing a rent increase, but the year before (in another apartment) I had to sign by a certain day otherwise a) I forfeited my right to the apartment and b) if I stayed, I'd automatically get a rent increase.
posted by lucy.jakobs at 12:44 PM on March 17, 2015


I'd prefer to postpone a decision until I get a chance to see what else may be available

They know. That's exactly why they want a decision now, or they're going to start showing it to other prospective tenants. If you don't decide to renew now, and it really is a high-demand rental area, you should count on having to move out at the end of the lease.

Dickish, but I don't see you having much leverage here (other than maybe bad reviews on yelp or whatever).
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:23 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


This happened to me when I was in grad school in Ann Arbor.
posted by joan_holloway at 1:33 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, chiming in to say that this is common in areas where the rental market is dominated by students. When I lived in Bloomington, IN (home of Indiana University), the requests for renewal for an August-August lease started in November and got really insistent around March.
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:00 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


I would say it is NOT a bluff. Although I too live in a college town (Madison) my place is pretty far on the fringe of what would be defined as a student populated area. I am required to renew my lease for August in January - 7 months in advance. If I don't, the management company starts showing the apartment (we had a new management company take over about a year ago and the they operate the same way as the old ones did). I looked at my apartment and signed the lease in January and moved in August 1, 2010. This year, there's been a FOR RENT sign on the building for a couple months now for a unit upstairs (this is the first time a sign has lasted longer than a week, my guess is that the new management company severely jacked up the rent).
posted by Bretley at 3:20 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've also run into apartments that issue a letter stating that if I want to retain X rate (or X+Y% rate) that I had to sign by a specific date well in advance and that if I did not, the rate would go up to Z (more than X+Y) "market rate" if I were to renew after that point.
posted by bookdragoness at 3:49 PM on March 17, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far. I will look at the lease and see what it says about renewal.

We do indeed live near a university, but not in a neighborhood containing any student housing. The management company does own units that are typically rented by students, so this may just be their usual student-oriented protocol.

What I meant by "is this a bluff?" was more along the lines of "is there some law that's supposed to prevent them from doing this that I'm unaware of?" For example, some years back a landlord tried to withhold my deposit, but it turned out what he was trying to do was illegal, and he was hoping I didn't know that. In this case, however, it sounds like this is a legal but unfortunate marketing tactic.

I may have some bargaining power since we're good tenants, pay the (high) rent on time every month, and this is an old and very weird house with numerous problems (floors that are grossly not level, wonky electrical, chimneys not up to code, slipshod remodeling work, I could go on). It has its good points too, but I imagine most people who could afford to rent it would probably turn it down anyway. It's notable that it was for sale for a year or two before it was converted to a rental.
posted by Maximian at 5:11 PM on March 17, 2015


You're probably stuck. Like many in this thread, this kind of thing happens to me every year. I refuse to renew my lease until oh, the last day it's due and one year two days before they stuck a "we will be showing your apartment tomorrow" notice on my door. It is nooooo joke.

If you want to move elsewhere, you need to shop around VERY EARLY next year. If they're going to demand a renewal in March, you better start apartment shopping in January, even if supposedly nothing officially opens for a few months yet.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:11 PM on March 17, 2015


If you want to know about the legality then checking with your local tenant association is a good place to start. Many universities also have information packets for students on what the law is around there.
posted by nat at 10:17 PM on March 17, 2015


Unfortunately, people like you who don't know what they want to do are exactly why landlords want to know early if you're going to be signing a lease or not. The best you could do is say that you don't know and see how soon they start showing the place. Once they start showing the place, you could decide to sign the lease and then have to worry about breaking it if you change your mind. It might buy you a little time though.
posted by Schleprock at 5:56 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]


We lived in a mainly student-occupied apartment complex near campus in Ann Arbor for years. Management would send a letter in the winter saying "renew now and you'll get special deal X!" I'd write back "thanks for letting us know, we'd like it here and would like to renew but can't commit yet" (we were often close to graduation or end of postdocs so this was just the truth). We'd renew when we were ready (usually sometime in the spring? I forget) maybe after they bugged us once or twice more, always getting the originally offered deal.

But I also heard stories of people losing their chance when they waited too long.

Eventually the students got sufficiently annoyed to support city council's passage of an ordinance change that kept landlords from asking till later in the year--I forget the details. So, the rules can change over time even in just once place--you really need to talk to someone local who knows this stuff.

You might also take a few hours to research current and past listings to confirm your idea of rents and of when things become available.

The pain of moving is real, but so is the pain of finding new tenants (and risking that they're flakes). But you need to have a good idea what your best alternative to renewing is likely to be before responding.

Sounds like you're probably in an area with a ton of rental housing so the alternative is certainly going to be better than "nothing else is available".
posted by bfields at 8:46 AM on March 18, 2015


Response by poster: In case anyone is curious as to how this worked out, we were able to stall for almost 3 months by creative "the dog ate my homework"-style tactics. We are too busy this week, we are now on vacation, whoops forgot to have both spouses sign, the kid spilled milk on the renewal form and now we need another copy, just email us a PDF oh wait looks like the printer is broken, etc etc. The property management company didn't apply very much pressure, though, and because we pay the rent promptly each month, look after the place, and rarely complain about anything, I figure they preferred to keep us if possible. . We were able to look at a few other rentals in the area, and ultimately decided to stay where we are for the coming year.

If this seems slightly underhanded, the company's attempts to force a decision far earlier were equally so. Our lease formally states that either party has to announce whether to renew/terminate within 30 days of the ending date, and that was amply satisfied despite the delays.
posted by Maximian at 10:55 PM on June 30, 2015


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