Breach of Lease
I am the owner of a condo in Oakland. I signed a 1 year lease with 2 Tenants in Aug ’02. I collected 1st months rent, a 1 mo. security and August ’03 rent . In Dec ’02 one tenant called, said they would be leaving and sent a letter stating they would leave by the end of December. Subsequently, one tenant moved out, the other stayed, making – by oral agreement – month to month payments on the ”lease”. On Mar 5, 2003, the remaining tenant said he would vacate the condo by Apr 1, would not pay for the month of March and demanded his security deposit. He moved back to the East Coast and is currently travelling abroad. Since then, I have re-rented the condo and have received a letter (from the first tenant who is still local!) threatening legal action if the security deposit is not returned! I mailed an itemized list of the use of the security deposit (covering damages, lost rent, etc…) to both tenants. MY QUESTION(S): Is this not a breach of lease and therefore am I entitled to use the security to cover lost rent? Also, am I entitled to sue the tenants for the month of March? Finally, did the breach occur in December thereby nullifying the lease then or did the lease still stand until March of 2003?

30 day notice
I wanted to know if your are renting and have a month to month rental agreement can a lanlord just give you a 30 day notice to vacate without having a valid reason?
or no reason at all?

and what actions should be taking if this is retalitory?

please help us,
thank you
–name removed–

Renting without a lease
Is it unlawfull for a landlord to accept rent from a tenant when the lease has expired and there was not a month to month (tenancy at will) clause? Is the tenancy at will automatically implied at the termination date of the lease?

Cancelling a 30 day notice: More Info
My wife, one year old son and I gave a 30 day notice in writing and signed because we were halfway through escrow on a house and things looked good. The lender fell through and now we need to find a place to live. We have lived at our current apt. for four years and are near perfect tenants. Before the lender dropped our resident landlady rented our apt. to another couple – rent, deposit, and signed lease. There is another apt. available in the building that has been vacant for 6+ months and they won’t give us a month to month lease on it – even though our current lease is month to month (they require a 1 yr., then it goes to month to month). There is a big property management company at the hilt and the resident landlady is just a nice lady who collects rent.

I read up on unlawful detainers and it seems that the 30-day notice is the contract they go by now and if we don’t leave they can file an unlawful detainer right away without giving notice. There is no evidence that a ‘Rescind of Lease Termination’ notice even exists.

Thank you for the help.