If you have a year long lease in California for a rental, through a rental management company, but need to leave before the year is up what are obligated to do to get your security deposit back?
thanks
Hi,
In California if you signed a lease you are liable for the monthly payment until the unit is re-rented to another party.
If the management company is willing to let you off by keeping the deposit consider yourself lucky.
And by the way if you leave early they are entitled to the deposit as damages because the leasor did not perform under the terms of the lease.
Good luck,
GR
Thanks for the advice.
This is where it gets sticky. We gave notice mid-June. The owners decided to terminate their arrengement with the rental managment company. We were obligated to take care of carpet cleaning, which we did and all was fine. The rental management company was responsable for repainting the unit as they had messed up several walls before we moved in. It took them three weeks to do it and then the owners took a vacation, so they did not even relist the rental until the last week in July. They rentaed it out a week later August 1st, and are now saying they are only going to be refunding to us one month rent.
Our contract was with the rental company, not the owners.
Does this all seem on the up and
The landlord’s responsibility is to mitigate the loss if you terminate your lease early. Since the landlord took almost a month to re-rent the property, they failed to mitigate their rental loss.
I believe you have a case should you want to take it to court. Your state law may allow you to recover the month rent plus triple damages because the landlord did not do what he was supposed to do by law.
Your lease agreement was with the management company as an agent of the landlord. The terms of the agreement with the management company are also binding upon the landlord.
I concur with Dave. First, make sure you understand your contract and CA law. If there is any discrepancy between the law and the facts, then you have a case.
Thank you both so much. After I left CA I relocated across country for employment. Should I seek out a lawyer in the new state I live in? or should I find a lawyer in the state of CA, in the county I came from?
You have to file in the jurisdiction of the property.