Hi everyone, it’s my first time posting in this community. Thanks in advance for reading and any suggestions/advice.
TL;DR: Do I have any recourse to go after apartment deposits if the contract was based on a sublet, seemingly without the landlord’s permission?
I’ll try to keep in short. Feel free to ask for more details.
About 3 months ago, a fellow foreigner friend and I responded to a Facebook posting to take over a lease from two people (one foreigner, one Taiwanese).
Together, they planned to move to abroad later this year. They were committing to living abroad for one year but wanted to keep their apartment with most of their belongings incase they decided to move back to Taiwan. Besides two visits back to Taiwan they planned to take over that year period, the apartment would be ours and we could even use the third bedroom for occasional guests.
We met them and viewed the apartment and they seemed fine. They told us that we wouldn’t need to contact the landlord, we could just contact them with any issues. Naively, that unfortunately didn’t ring any bells for me.
A couple weeks after signing the lease and giving them our deposits, they decided they were going to lease out the 3rd room without our permission. It wasn’t explicitly stated in the signed agreement that they wouldn’t fill the room but through our in-person meeting and through text messages it was confirmed that we would have the 3rd room for our own use. At this point, my friend was already living with them. I was not as I was living out the end of my prior lease.
We were not happy with this. Reluctantly, we decided to deal with it since we found a friend who would be the third roommate and we didn’t want to deal with moving around again. That was definitely a mistake.
While waiting for them to move abroad, my friend was getting fed up with their uncleanliness and horrible attitudes about everything (I’ll spare the details on all of that as it could be a post on it’s own). She decided she couldn’t take it anymore unless they were leaving the country soon.
So in a text, she asked when they might be leaving (she did it in a subversive, nice way). In the same message, she asked for the landlord’s contact info “incase of emergencies” while they were gone. A very reasonable request.
Well, they lost at that request saying that that was totally unnecessary and we could only contact them. This is went I realized that not having the landlord’s signature on the lease was likely on purpose (I know, I’m silly).
This was the final straw for my friend and she immediately moved out, left the key, and sent a message to them saying we (she and I) weren’t a good fit (for them).
In total, she lived there just about a month and I didn’t stay even one night (I was planning to move in 3 days later). A few days later she sent a nice e-mail asking for our deposits back with our bank info.
They ignored and blocked her messages.
I sent a similar message a few days later and the same thing.
The apartment immediately went back up on Facebook for a higher price.
Based on a Facebook post from someone else, they eventually totally turned over the lease to someone else rather than just subletting it.
After learning this, as well as a Taiwanese friend telling me that subletting is illegal without expressed permission from the landlord, I decided to e-mail them and again ask for our deposits in a stronger manner. (I wanted to do this earlier but because the agreement says we have to pay 2 months rent for breaking the contract so I was worried they might pursue that if I pushed too hard).
They replied basically telling me to go fuck myself because we broke the lease, without acknowledgement of any of their bullshit. This was a week ago and I haven’t yet answered. I’m also pretty sure they are abroad now (but they will obviously come back at some point since one of them is Taiwanese).
So do I have any recourse to seek back our deposits since the landlord was seemingly unaware of their sublet attempt?
If so, how should I go about it?
If you read this long thanks so much. Or if you didn’t but still have some thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
Cheers.