On Saturday my roommate and I put down a deposit and signed a deposit agreement for an apartment which is supposed to be vacated at the end of this month, and available in mid-october. About an hour or two after we left, the manager called me and told me that one out of the three current occupants has decided she does not want to move out. Supposedly, they all three gave 30 day notice to be out by the end of this month, meaning this is 2 weeks after that. We have now signed a deposit agreement, though we have yet to sign a lease. The apartment complex is involving us in this for some reason, and saying that they are trying to resolve it. Does this previous tenant have any legal right to stay in the apartment after she gave notice, and we signed papers? Are we crazy or is this completely unprofessional behavior for this complex to even be calling us and not just telling this girl, "sorry it's been rented." If anyone has advice, and maybe a legal article online I can refer to or refer the apartment complex too, that would be very helpful. Thank you.

This is in California, I forgot to mention.

1) You gave a deposit but did not sign the lease
2) Any issue the complex has with the previous tenant has NOTHING to do with you other than preventing you from renting the apartment.

All the complex has to do is return your deposit and say sorry, but the apartment is not available like we thought

If they want to try to evict the current occupant, that's up to them and has nothing to do with you. If they can't have the apartment ready by when they agreed to (assuming this was on the deposit agreement) then they may have to pay any penalities for that.

You have no say in their dealings with the current occupant.

Thanks for your help.

To add to this question: I understand what you're saying in that we have nothing to really do with this situation. However, do you think that the apartment complex is obligated to uphold this girl's 30 day notice? We were not given the option to sign the lease and were told we would do that when we move in. By this logic then, we could have arrived on our move-in day with our moving trucks and they could tell us, "sorry it's no longer available." The reason this is frustrating to us is because it seems so clear that this girl is in the wrong, and yet the apartment complex is backing down from her for no apparent reason, when she really has no right. Us not getting the apartment is just a side effect of that, I get that, but it seems like everything should be pretty straight forward here and yet it's becoming a mess.

I would look at the bright side, do you really want to deal with shady landlords in the first place?

Your probably better off not to be there. I wouldn't make it complicated.