My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Minnesota
My husband and I signed a lease with a private homeowner from October 1, 2013 through September 30, 2014. In March, my husband got a promotion, and his company relocated us, so we needed to break our lease agreement with our landlord. We gave 60 days notice, and he said we had to pay the remainder of the lease. We asked if we could sublet, because there were 5 months left on the lease, and he said no, he was going to try and sell the property. He said if he sold the property, we would not be obligated to pay from the date it closed. My husband's company offers three months of rental reimbursement as an incentive for landlords to break the lease, so we offered our landlord three months rent that he could have no matter if he sold or re-rented the place. He agreed and drew up a lease cancellation agreement. We wrote him three checks for each month that he was to cash on the first of each month. We cleaned the property thoroughly and patched and repainted the walls where we had hung things. We requested a walk through with the landlord, and he kept changing times until we had no other option but to leave the property without a walk through. We thought we were ok, because we spent a lot of time cleaning and have never not gotten a full deposit back before. Before we moved out, I switched all the utilities back to the landlords name with the understanding that we would pay the final utility bills. At the bottom of one of the e-mail chains with the utility company, I included our forwarding address which I forwarded to our landlord asking him to look the e-mail over. Four weeks after we moved out, we tried to contact the landlord to see where our security deposit was, and he said he was keeping it to repaint the entire house due to the fact that our original lease said we could not hang things on the wall without his permission. That being said, the original paint was very old, and patched prior to our moving in. We have pictures of patching and painting he had done previously. (Basically he was getting us to pay for his entire house to be painted to sell.) He also communicated at the bottom of our lease cancellation agreement there was a clause that if the house wasn't left in original condition that the lease cancellation agreement was null and void. He said that because we had hung stuff on the wall the contract was null and void, and we were required to pay the rest of the original lease. We just received a 72 hour notice to pay the original agreement, or he will report it to the credit bureau.
Here are our questions:
1. We spoke with a tenants rights organization in Minnesota, and they said that we could sue him for our security deposit times 2 plus $500, because our forwarding address at the bottom of the utility e-mail chain was sufficient notice, and in Minnesota the landlord has to give a bill for damages within 21 days of moving out or they forfeit their right to any deposit. Is this so? Is the forwarding address at the bottom of an e-mail chain sufficient?
2. Can our land lord come after us for the amount of our original agreement? Can he report us to the credit bureau, even though we had the lease cancellation agreement?
3. Does he have any right to the last months rent?
My husband and I signed a lease with a private homeowner from October 1, 2013 through September 30, 2014. In March, my husband got a promotion, and his company relocated us, so we needed to break our lease agreement with our landlord. We gave 60 days notice, and he said we had to pay the remainder of the lease. We asked if we could sublet, because there were 5 months left on the lease, and he said no, he was going to try and sell the property. He said if he sold the property, we would not be obligated to pay from the date it closed. My husband's company offers three months of rental reimbursement as an incentive for landlords to break the lease, so we offered our landlord three months rent that he could have no matter if he sold or re-rented the place. He agreed and drew up a lease cancellation agreement. We wrote him three checks for each month that he was to cash on the first of each month. We cleaned the property thoroughly and patched and repainted the walls where we had hung things. We requested a walk through with the landlord, and he kept changing times until we had no other option but to leave the property without a walk through. We thought we were ok, because we spent a lot of time cleaning and have never not gotten a full deposit back before. Before we moved out, I switched all the utilities back to the landlords name with the understanding that we would pay the final utility bills. At the bottom of one of the e-mail chains with the utility company, I included our forwarding address which I forwarded to our landlord asking him to look the e-mail over. Four weeks after we moved out, we tried to contact the landlord to see where our security deposit was, and he said he was keeping it to repaint the entire house due to the fact that our original lease said we could not hang things on the wall without his permission. That being said, the original paint was very old, and patched prior to our moving in. We have pictures of patching and painting he had done previously. (Basically he was getting us to pay for his entire house to be painted to sell.) He also communicated at the bottom of our lease cancellation agreement there was a clause that if the house wasn't left in original condition that the lease cancellation agreement was null and void. He said that because we had hung stuff on the wall the contract was null and void, and we were required to pay the rest of the original lease. We just received a 72 hour notice to pay the original agreement, or he will report it to the credit bureau.
Here are our questions:
1. We spoke with a tenants rights organization in Minnesota, and they said that we could sue him for our security deposit times 2 plus $500, because our forwarding address at the bottom of the utility e-mail chain was sufficient notice, and in Minnesota the landlord has to give a bill for damages within 21 days of moving out or they forfeit their right to any deposit. Is this so? Is the forwarding address at the bottom of an e-mail chain sufficient?
2. Can our land lord come after us for the amount of our original agreement? Can he report us to the credit bureau, even though we had the lease cancellation agreement?
3. Does he have any right to the last months rent?
Breaking a Lease: Tenant Rights - Lease Breaking
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