When one tenant wants to leave and the other tenant wants to stay, what do I do?
The other day I was reading apost on line about one tenant was going to move out and the other tenant wanted to stay. The landlord was asking what they can do here?. The one tenant who wants to stay can afford the rent alone but they don’t want to give notice causing the tenancy to end which could allow the landlord to evict them. How can a landlord handle this issue?.
Our awnser to clients is to follow the law. What does the tenancy law say in this situation?.
When a tenancy starts the tenants sign a tenancy agreement. If you have used the BC standard agreement there is a requirement for the tenant to end a periodic tenancy by giving the landlord one month’s notice to end the tenancy.
There is one small factor many tenants who want to do this miss understand. If a tenant moves out without giving notice they have not relinquished their responsibility for that tenancy. A tenant’s responsibility only ends after they give notice and complete the move out process to end the tenancy.
How do we handle this situation?. First we ask a few questions.
One, is the tenant who wants to stay a good tenant?
Two, can they afford the unit on their own?
If these questions are positive then we work with the tenants to remove the one from their responsibility and to keep the one who wants to stay. We always ask for something in return, in these cases we ask the tenant who is staying to sign a term lease preferably for another year. In today’s market we are probably not going to get an increase in the rent though in other market times we would also ask for that.
We also talk to the tenant who is moving out to explain to them that if they leave without completing the notice to move out they are still responsible for the unit incluidig damage and unpaid rent. Most people have good friends though are not willing to take that risk of the tenant paying the rent or not cuainsg damage they could be held responsible for. When you explain this we often receive notice from the one tenant to vacate the unit.
One other factor is how you return the damage deposit to the tenant that is vacating. If they contributed they are entitled to the deposit funds. We will draft a letter to indicate that the tenant staying in the property will refund the moving out tenant their portion of the security deposit and send the copy to the tenant moving out preferably have them sign it.
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