Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Getting out of renters agreement
My Fiance and I just put a bid on a home. We weren't planning on doing this until after we got married, but we fell in love with a home we saw and decided to bid on it. Little crazy trying to buy a house and do a wedding at the same time. But the problem is we are under a lease at our apartment until Sept. ( As I said we weren't planning on buying at this time) The Contract states we have to pay $300 and then pay for each month the Apartment goes unoccupied after we leave. Which could end up being pricey if they don't rent it right away. We are trying to figure out a way to get out of the contract without having to pay that much. Anyone have ideas?
Re: Getting out of renters agreement
If you're under a contract, at least in California (but I'm pretty certain it's common everywhere), you're stuck. My best advice would be to see if you can find a subletter - someone who will rent it from you while you rent it from the owner. If the owner agrees to this, that is.
How popular is your apartment neighborhood? Is there a waiting list? If so, don't worry about it - you'll be replaced easily. If not, well, that might be a bit harder.
Ditto this. They make you sign a contract for a reason, to protect themselves from someone bailing at any time. I would look at your contract to see what it says about subletting and if it is allowed. Depending on your area you might come across a bunch of people that just need a short term lease but it is hard to find at some apartment complexes. It sucks but that is how the apartment complex protects themselves financially.
It's a contract for a reason. You're not any more special than anybody else in your complex, I bet half of them move out because they bought a house.
You'll just have to suck it up and deal with it. Perhaps you shouldn't have been looking for a house when you knew that you couldn't afford afford mortgage and rent at the same time.
I lived in several apartments in several different states, and all had the same stipulations -- you had to pay the rent until your lease was up, even if you moved out before then.
No exceptions to the policy in any case that I ever heard of -- the most moving case being a friend who'd lost her job, couldn't find work, and couldn't pay the rent anymore and was having to move back in with family. She was still stuck paying rent for that apartment until the lease was up.
Talk to your apartment complex and find out their policies on finding new renters / subleasers. When I had to move mid-lease for a job in another state, my complex offered to not only put my apartment on a list of available apartments for a full lease, but also put my apartment on the list of apartment available for short-term sublease (for the rest of my lease term).
But, they told me that there were a couple available apartments, and I could read between the lines -- they'd try to lease those apartments first before mine, since they already had a lease with me for mine. There were also tons of apartments on their list of apartments available for sublease, so potential subletters had their pick.
What I did was take very flattering photos of my apartment and list it on Craigslist as available for sublease. (And keep re-listing if it falls off after a day or so). I also offered a discount -- I think I offered to pay $200 a month of the $795 rent for the rest of the lease. I got lucky -- after only 2 days, someone saw my ad, liked the apartment, followed up with me, and it all worked out perfectly. I paid that $200 per month (I was able to pay it all upfront) but it was MUCH better than paying the full lease.
If you can, start looking for someone to sublet ASAP. If you signed a contract, you're going to have to abide by it.
Can you afford both payments? Because if you can't afford both why would you put an offer on a home?
Read your lease to see if it allows you to sublease the apartment or assign your lease to someone else. If so, you could do like PP mentioned and post the apartment on Craigslist to try to find a subletter We did this when DH wanted to break his lease to move in with me and were able to find someone to take over DH's lease within a couple of weeks. We were in a popular, small complex in a college town though, so I could imagine this situation would be a lot tougher in a less transient community or in a complex with a lot of vacancies. If the complex has vacancies, offering to pay part of the rent is a way you can entice potential renters to sublease your unit instead of going directly through the complex.
Also, you can mention to your manager that you're looking to sublease and see if there is a waiting list of any potential tenants. They might be able to fill the unit for you, or at least you put them on notice that your unit is available if a potential tenant calls, etc.
This. I would never have made an offer if I couldn't swing both in case something happens (like you aren't allowed a sublease.)
Talk to your leasing office about subletting or lease reassignment. Laws on that vary state by state so they'd be the most knowledgeable on what your options are. My community has a $250 lease reassignment fee to allow someone to take over your lease, but that's a heck of a lot better than paying through the end of your lease, plus the lease break fees.
Sit down with your H and decide if you are able to swing it. If not, retract your offer on the home and wait to start looking again. You will find the "perfect" house again without having to pay thousands in fees.
Contracts exist for a reason. What if the people who accepted the contract you put on this house were just trying to get it out of it because it was convenient for them?
I don't know anyone who has succesfully done this without finding a replacement renter or having to pay what is left on the lease - contracts exist for a reason and it's not your landlords problem you'll have to pay more money than you want - the lease protects you from being thrown out of your place on a whim as well.
In any case, when we put our contract on our new construction, we knew we'd have 4 months left on our renting lease so we made sure we could pay if we didn't find an alternative. We gave our landlord immediate notice so they could start the process, and we asked that if we could find a replacement would they allow us to break the lease without penalty. In the long term, your rental company will have to fill the space anyway, so it makes sense for them to work with you since you'll be leaving anyway and should they find somebody willing to sign a lease long-term earlier, not allowing them to do so can put them in a position where your lease is done and there is nobody around at that time to fill it.
We put adds out before they go around to it (they tend to drag their feet since legally, you have to pay regardless and it's not "urgent" to them) in order to facilitate the process and we found an acceptable renter to move in early so they would let us out of the lease early. Had we not been able to do this, we would have had to pay.
I agree with all the other comments ... unless your landlord is willing to be flexible, you are stuck paying rent through the end of the lease term. I'm not sure why you would put an offer in on a house without a plan for your rental situation.
I'm a landlord, and personally, I do not allow tenants to sublease. I want control over who is living in my property, and I'm not willing to let the current tenant pick any random person to move in and take over his/her lease.
In this situation, it sounds like you might not be stuck paying rent through September if a new tenant is found before then. You might just have to hope that a new tenant is found quickly. That being said, your landlord doesn't have a whole lot of motivation to look for a new tenant right away since you're contractually obligated to pay rent through September.
If you get the house you offered on, I would plan your mortgage financing so that you get to keep enough of your savings to continue paying rent through September in case you need to.
Mr. Sammy Dog
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