Who is the rent owed to?

I did a lease/purchase on some apartments on Aug. 4th. The rent was due on the 1st with late payments after the 5th. The owner signed the lease on the 4th with the special stip that I take up landlording duties and rights immediately upon acceptance. Presently several tenants still owe for August and want to pay, the owner is claiming that he gets the rent money. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

God Bless,
Brandon

Should have been clearly addressed in the contract. Did you have your attorney review before signing?

That said, under most law, the rent is paid to whoever it is due to for the time that they owned/controlled it.

In this case, since you took over on the 4th, the previous landlord would be due 4 days worth of rent from ALL the tenants and you would be due an average of 26 days worth of rent. Probably ones for the courts to decide, but any lates would be yours to keep as they weren’t officially late when the previous landlord lost control of the apartments.

Also, you should have received from the previous landlord ALL of the deposit money for the current tenants (or at least, authorization to sign off on the escrow account).

Raj

If rent is due and payable on the 1st of the month the previous owner only gets rent due from the 1st to the 4th.

In Louisiana, if it is not specified, the selling owner gets the entire month’s rent…

Keith

It should be prorated, therefore the previous owner would get the 1st-4th of all occupied units during those dates.

“Should be” is subjective…depends on the sate and the contract terms…

Keith