landlord extended lease without tennant permission. Pay or Evict.

When I originally tried to lease at Peakveiw Place apartments I told them I
couldn\'t do anything longer than a 6 month lease, and at first that was
fine with them, we went over everything with the leasing agent, 30 day
notice to vacate, etc... so when she called me back and said that her
manager couldn\'t do less than a 15 month lease we ended up having to
negotiate it to a 9.5 month lease (still much longer than I needed/ wanted
but I needed to move right away for work purposes) so she said she\'d adjust
the dates and I could come sign the lease. Well when we got to the part
about the notice all she said was, \"we\'ve been over this part\" and
skipped that page, so I thought it was exactly what we HAD talked about.
Turns out when I went in 45 days before my lease was up (thinking I was well
within my 30 days) to give notice, her manager was who I ended up talking
to, and he said, \"well, now we\'re extending your lease through the next
month, and pro-rating the rent, so !
now you owe us for that full month, because you didn\'t give us 60 days
notice.\" I explained the situation, and he said, \"well that\'s not my
problem. you\'ll have to pay that or get evicted. I don\'t care either
way.\" Really nice people to be working with, right? Reasonable notice has
definitely been given (9.5 months of having our lease end date being October
13, 2008 should have been plenty of notice that we would be out by the last
day of our lease, since we would have no right to the property after that
date... The 60 day notice was intended to protect people from being homeless
if they didn\'t have anywhere to go, yet... but now apartment communities
are using this 60 day notice to charge us OUTRAGEOUS fees if we want to move
out on the date that THEY assigned us, even when we give them more than a
month and a half\'s notice... and I\'ve been in and out of town for the past
almost 3 weeks with my grandmother in the hospital (I do have documentation
of this and I !
also told the apartment community about it... he said, \"then !
maybe yo
u should have mailed us something while you were there.\" yes. when I\'m
distraught over my dying grandmother, I think I\'ll leave the hospital to
try and find a way to send you a letter. Yeah, right... nobody would do
that.) All I\'m asking for is to be treated fairly. I gave plenty of
notice, as soon as I could considering the circumstances, and they are
trying to charge me an unfair penalty for something that was their fault to
begin with.

This isn't an extension of the lease. You negotiated a 9.5 month lease which expires 10/13, right? Is that what the copy of your lease says too?

Next, does the lease state that you have to give 60 days notice to vacate? If so, you need to give that amount of notice (and not 45 days) prior to the expiration date of your lease. This is not about homelessness, it is about the required amount of notice that you agreed to give in the lease. You maust abide by your written agreement and pay for those days.

Finally, was your rent due on the 13th of the month? Some states are classified as term states and some are literal day states. In a literal day state, your notice days are counted day for day from the day you gave notice. If you gave notice on, say, August 15th, you would start counting the amount of required days from that day forward until you had reached the end of the required period. You could end up moving out in the middle of a month. But in a term state, the notice given on August 15th doesn't take effect until the next rent due date. If you paid rent on the 1st, that notice wouldn't start counting until September 1. So you need to read through your state law and see which type of notice period is required. Look under any section called noptices or ending the lease and look for terms such as "notice given the other at least thirty days prior to the periodic rental date" or "given to coincide with the rent due date". Such terms would indicate a term state. In term states, you normally move out the last day of the rental period. (If rent was due on the 1st, you would be required to vacate on the last day of the month.)