I have two occupants in an apartment who are not the tenants under the lease. The tenant does not live their. The lease is up at the end of May. The tenant was sent a 30 day letter and responded with a letters stating they did not want to renew the lease. The occupants were not aware of the tenant saying he did not want to renew the lease. And the occupants called saying they wanted to renew the lease but the apartment has already be rented to someone else coming up in June. A 30 day letter was sent to the occupants a couple of weeks into the month of May. Now my question is do the occupants have the right to stay in the apartment for 30 days since the letter was sent out late, and would they have any chance of being able to renew the lease since they were not properly given a 30 day notice on time and the apartment has already been rented out.
I am from Texas and am not sure about PA laws. Be aware of bad advice maybe even the following. We know one thing they are not trespassers if they live in the unit even one night, they become tenants. Has the rent been paid for May. I assume it has or else you would have filed eviction for non-payment of rent.
I would say that you have to wait until the end of the 30 days to file an eviction. You would file against the tenant and all occupants. If you had ignored the occupants and accepted the tenants notice to vacate you could file for holding over by the occupants. No matter what you may have a mess on your hands. Your new tenant may not wait around until you get the occupants out. It may be best to deal with them and ask them to move out at the end of May. They will probably refuse. They can not force you to sign a lease but they can force you to evict them which as you know is a long process that you can not start until mid June.
Another option is to lease them the apt and refund the deposit to your new tenants.
Not good news but hopefully it will work out for the best for you. LOL
I can’t say that I’ve ever been in this situation. Who has been paying the rent - the tenant on the lease, or the occupants?
If the occupants have been faithfully paying the rent and are decent “tenants/occupants”, other than not actually being the ones you leased to, I’d go ahead and sign them up for a 12 month lease! Sincerely apologize to the other person you leased to, refund them whatever they’ve paid you, and don’t waste any more of your energy on it.
If, for whatever reason, you don’t really want the current occupants you could always offer to renew the lease in their name and then give them a lease showing a HUGE increase in the rent. That might scare them out of there.
Keep us posted…it’s an interesting situation.
Karla in Amarillo