My landlord has indicated that he might sell the apartment that I am staying in. I have a lease that doesn’t expire for a while. While he hasn’t indicated that he wants me out right now, am I within my legal rights to refuse to move out until the end of the lease, regardless if he wants to sell it? If he wants to sell it, that’s fine, I will move out. But I don’t want to move until the lease is up. I would consider moving if the landlord compensates me for one or two months rent to cover finding a new apartment.
The contract has a clause that I can pay a fee to break the lease, a clause that states the landlord cannot break the lease unless legally allowed (whatever that means), but there is no mention of anything regarding if the landlord wants to break the lease.
Ask the landlord. Most people are pretty reasonable. The first place my wife and I lived in when we got married had that happen. The landlord actually asked us if we’d be interested in buying it before it was listed. (wish we could have afforded it, it’d probably be worth double by now). But in the end, she gave us a free month off rent for the inconvenience and we moved out a little before the contract ended.
I think when selling, the landlord is legally allowed to break the lease. As for compensation, it seems reasonable for him to have to pay the same penalty as you would if you had broken it. I’m not sure if that’s how it will play out though.
I actually don’t think this is true unless its specified in the lease. I know when this happened to me, he had to ask me permission to even show the place. I declined his request and was told that its totally normal and acceptable to do so. I simply moved out when my lease ended a couple months later.
Thanks for this, it was very practical and helpful to me just now! Also the link to land laws esp law 100 about under what conditions the landlord can evict.
We are in lease until mid-Sept and the agent suddenly asked yesterday if she could show the place to a potential buyer today. Partly due to being encouraged by your post, we said ‘No, we want to stay till end of lease’, and ‘we think it’s rude to ask for this without first discussing it with us’. The agent apologized to us. (Conversation by msg in Japanese).
Today I talked to the English speaking manager who’s a very nice older gent. He said definitely they have to give you 3 months rent if they want to break the lease. At that level of compensation, and especially if there is an equally nice apartment available, we are not thrilled to move now but I own a place back in California so I have sympathy for the owner and if they have a buyer with strong interest I might be willing to help them out. Not sure how hard it is to sell a place here now. And certainly compared to the purchase price (I don’t know for sure but I’m pretty sure), I believe that rents are super low. Almost like the owners are losing money and subsidizing renters. Like purchase prices for condos are jerked up way out of proportion with rental value. Maybe I’m wrong but I’m paying 21,000 rent and that might be .005% or less of sale value. Poor money in purchasing for rental unless you can turn it into an AirBnB (I think).
We would have stayed there for we really liked the area and interestingly that place is still for sale and has been presumably sitting empty for about 3 years now.
Most rents here don’t come close to covering the mortgage if there is one. We are in the place we are now not because the owners need our rent money, but largely because the wife was afraid ghosts would move in and ruin their investment. She’s a nice lady and I’m happy for her superstition.