Living with no renewed lease in same apartment in Portland, OR

January 28, 2016 8:33 PM

Our landlord has not sent us a new lease.

We contacted our property manager about a month before our lease was due to expire, and received a positive reply that they would send us a new contract. They asked us which length of lease we preferred, and we responded with our preference. We received no new lease in the mail to sign. We then sent another after our lease had expired letting them know we had not received a new lease, and another email a few days ago. There has been no response, positive or negative. What does it mean for us that we are seemingly living without a lease in Portland, Oregon? Are there things we need to be aware of suddenly with the legality of our situation?

posted by Corduroy to Law & Government (6 answers total)

Does your lease say anything about this? I know that in the past, the leases for apartments I've stayed in often specified something along the lines of the lease defaulting to month to month (often with a rent increase) if no other arrangements were made. However, this wasn't in Oregon. You may find it helpful to look up Portland and/or Oregon-specific landlord tenant laws to see if there is a provision for this kind of thing.

Also, is there an office for the property manager that you can go to in person? Or maybe a number you could call?
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:42 PM on January 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Look at your existing lease. Odds are, there is a clause that defines what happens at end of the contract period -- I've seen some that auto-renew under the same terms, and some that auto-convert to month-to-month, if no new contract is presented.
posted by peakcomm at 8:43 PM on January 28, 2016

We ended up in this same situation, but down in Salem. There may very well be Portland-specific laws, so calling the city for information is probably your best bet.

That said, the realtor we were working with at the time (we were house-hunting as we knew we needed to move, because lease expiring) told us that with the expired lease, because we had lived in the rental for 2 years, the owners had to give us 3 months notice before they could force us out; we had to give them 30 days notice when we were leaving.
posted by genehack at 9:05 PM on January 28, 2016

We've lived by this arrangement for a couple years. Technically you're a "tenant at will," meaning you're month-to-month and you can move, or your landlord can evict you, with 30 days notice, without a reason. This is what landlordology has to say about being a tenant-at-will in Oregon:

91.050 Tenancy at will. One who enters into the possession of real estate with the consent of the owners, under circumstances not showing an intention to create a freehold interest, is considered a tenant at will. When the rent reserved in the lease at will is payable at periods of less than three months, a notice to terminate the tenancy is sufficient if it is equal to the interval between the times of payment of rent. The notice to terminate a tenancy at will is sufficient if given for the prescribed period prior to the expiration of the period for which, by the terms of the lease and holding, rents are to be paid.

If you trust your landlord and live a life in which you anticipate possibly moving all of a sudden, this is actually a pretty good arrangement. However, I wouldn't rent this way with just any landlord.

Edit: on reading the above post more closely, maybe your arrangement is a bit different re: eviction times because your lease has expired.
posted by Miss T.Horn at 12:07 AM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

You're now a month to month tenant. This is really common here. The laws in Portland proper have changes recently in terms of notice periods, increasing the notice for rent increases and lease terminations to 90 days. You still can give a 30 day notice to vacate.
posted by vespabelle at 6:08 AM on January 29, 2016

As vespabelle pointed out, there is a new Portland-specific rule that requires your landlord to provide 90 days notice of a no-cause lease termination or a rent increase of more than 5%. The primary concern with being month-to-month is that your landlord can raise your rent or ask you to vacate in a relatively short time-- if you have a lease, your lease sets both your rent amount and guaranteed length of tenancy (unless you break your lease or give your landlord cause to evict you). If you're sure you want to stay, I would suggest keeping at the property manager for a new lease--in the current Portland rental market, having a lease is a safer bet in most cases.
posted by Kpele at 9:00 AM on January 29, 2016