Ask Me Help Desk - Landlord shotens a 30 day nitice!

My lease ended on July 15th and my land lord never sent another lease for me to sign even though I requested him to many times. I gave my 30 day notice on Sept.30 which should bring me to Nov.1st. Well the police have told me two times that my landlord has called them and told them that the 15th was the last day I had access to my apt. so I never entered after that. But now the landlord wants the money for them two weeks that I had "no access to". Is this legal considering I don't believe I even had a lease anymore and that I still had 2 more weeks until my notice was up? And he is now refusing to give me back my 810 dollar security deposit. I also still had few belongings there because I thought I had until the first to move out and I didn't dare enter after the police told me I could not.

You had the right to occupy the property until the end of October/Nov 1st per YOUR NOTICE and YES you owe the 2 weeks and should have used that time to MOVE and CLEAN the property and returned the unit KEYS to the landlord on the 1st of November.

First, you DID have a lease. When a lease expires, it is a automatically converted to a periodic lease (month to month in your case). All the terms of the lease continue in force except for the expiration date and rental amount.

Second, I'm confused here. Did you, in fact move out on Oct 31? When did you actually turn over the keys to the landlord. Why is the LL calling the police at all?

As for the 2 weeks. If your original lease expired on July 15th, then the month to month was from 15th to 14th. So on Sept 15th you should have paid for the period of 9/15-10/14. You therefore owe for the additional 2 weeks since you informed the landlord you were terminating your lease at the end of October. However, if he turned around and refused you access after Oct 15, then you would have a case for not paying it.

Finally, if you still have possessions in the apartment, you have to make arrangements with the landlord to remove them. You could have done so without problem prior to Nov 1. At this point you can no longer. But you have to act fast, because the landlord could consider them abandoned and throw them out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arleneharlow

My lease ended on July 15th and my land lord never sent another lease for me to sign even though I requested him to many times. I gave my 30 day notice on Sept.30 which should bring me to Nov.1st. Well the police have told me two times that my landlord has called them and told them that the 15th was the last day I had access to my apt. so I never entered after that. But now the landlord wants the money for them two weeks that I had "no access to". Is this legal considering I don't believe I even had a lease anymore and that I still had 2 more weeks until my notice was up? And he is now refusing to give me back my 810 dollar security deposit. I aslo still had few belongings there because I thought I had until the first to move out and I didn't dare enter after the police told me I could not.

Your one year lease converted automatically to a month to month when you didn't enter into a new lease. You then would have paid rent from the 15th of one month to the 14th of the next month and if you stayed over by one day - and you apparently carried over 2 weeks - you owed another month's rent. You did not rent week by week and so you owe for the entire month. It's not when you gave notice; it's the time of the rental agreement - which was the 15th to the 14th. You cannot modify the rental agreement by changing the terms unless the landlord consents - and he obviously did not.

In some States - I only know NYS law - if your belongings are still there you can be considered to still be residing there and can still owe rent (for a reasonable period of time). Storing your belongings there might have caused your landlord to be unable to rent the apartment.