Video Summary
Can a landlord change the rent after a lease has been signed? The answer is no, you cannot, because the lease says that you’re going to pay your rent for a certain amount of time and this is what the rate is. It’s a contract between the landlord and the tenant and so the landlord cannot turn around and change the rent in mid-stream. Sometimes, I’m also asked about, by tenants many times, whether or not if the landlord, and sometimes by landlords too, if they sell the property, can they terminate your lease. The answer is no, that whoever purchases property is taking it subject to whatever rights that the tenant has.
If a tenant has a lease, they have a right to occupy the property for whatever the term of the lease is, and if the lease specifies how much rent they’re supposed to pay, as long as they pay that amount of rent, they have a right to remain in the property. Of course, there may be other terms of the lease that they must abide by, but as far as their rent’s concerned, the landlord can’t change the rent that’s set forth in a lease. Now, sometimes you get a lease, that the people have stayed in there for, let’s say a year, and the lease expires. They continue on. They keep paying the same rent. They become a month to month tenant.
Then the question becomes, “Well, can the landlord raise the rent once they become a month to month tenant?” The way that the landlord can do that is they have to send a 15-day notice that they are terminating the month to month tenancy, meaning that they’re going to terminate the tenancy. [In 00:02:09] the same notice or agreement with the tenant, they can say that, “I will continue to lease to you but it’s going to be at a higher rental amount.” That’s how a landlord raises the rent on a tenant by giving him 15 days notice that he’s terminating a month to month tenancy. Hopefully you don’t run into any problems like that.
If you have any questions, give me a call at 727 847 2288.