Email Lease?

We have lived in our house for 3 years now and our lease expired last May. Our landlord emailed my husband and said "I just realized your lease expires this month. Time flies. I have no intent of a rent increase this year. Do you want to have another one year lease or longer?" My husband responded saying "Yes we certainly want to renew the lease. We will discuss it and let you know if we want to sign longer than the standard year lease." It is now August and we have not heard anything from our landlord about signing a lease, and obviously we haven't done so yet. Now we are looking to buy a house and wonder if our landlord will consider this email as our lease agreement. Technically we haven't signed anything. Is our email a legal binding lease agreement?

No, it's not considered legally binding. It is not the actual contract.

It sounds like your landlord is a bit flighty.

Because your landlord has allowed time to elapse, your lease is now considered month to month. This means you are free to give him 30 day's notice at any time.

Please check your state statute. While you are a m2m tenant and can give notice to vacate, not all states are 30 days notice. You may be able to give as few as 7 days notice (NC) or may have to give as many as 60 days notice (DE) by state law in order to move out. Check to see how much notice you must give. Or post your state here and we can tell you. Give the notice at the beginning of the rental period to avoid conflicts in term states.