One of the more distressing parts of buying a house, at
least for me as a former landlord/tenant law intern, is breaking our lease with
our landlords. Our lease doesn’t
expire until October, but when we bid on the Long Island house in January, we
know that staying in Bronxville until the fall is implausible. I’m already finding the four
flights of stairs to our front door cumbersome and I’ve only just started my
second trimester. “You need to
talk to Jeff and Theresa,” my husband says the day before we are scheduled to
meet with our attorney to sign the real estate contract. “You have to tell them.”
Naturally, concocting a way to worm out of a contractual
obligation falls to me, the licensed- if not technically practicing- attorney. My husband deals with all the financial
aspects of the transaction: Locking the mortgage rate, securing the insurance
binder, shooting down my efforts to outfit each room as if it is destined to be
featured in an upcoming issue of Architectural
Digest. In other words, he gets
all the easy tasks.
My palms are clammy as I dial Theresa’s number. Jeff and Theresa are about five years
older than us and have two children of their own. They are perfectly lovely, reasonable people, but something
tells me that they will not be as excited as we are about our forthcoming foray
into homeownership.
To my amazement, I am wrong. “We’re so happy for you guys!” Theresa exclaims after I’ve
finished rattling off the spiel I prepared on index cards and practiced at
least six times in the shower.
“And we kind of figured after we got your card.” She is referring to the announcement in
our recent Christmas card that we are expecting our second child this
summer. Theresa says that she and
Jeff had preemptively discussed what they would do if we asked to terminate the
lease, and they’ve decided to list the apartment for sale. “When do you think you’ll close?”
Theresa asks. “Some time in April,
I think,” I reply, though it’s hard to know for sure because in New York
closing dates are approximate.
Based on that, we agree that the last day of our tenancy will be April 30th.
“This could not have worked out any better,” my husband
observes when I recap my conversation with Theresa later that evening. “I know,” I agree, but I still feel
uneasy. I am certain that breaking
a lease should not be this painless.
Again, I seem to be wrong. Within days I am standing in the kitchen with Jeff and
Theresa’s listing agent, discussing plans for a photographer to take pictures for the listing and scheduling dates in February to hold an open house. A few days after that, when the listing
is posted on the Internet, I feel a real sense of pride of ownership. The apartment appears warm and
inviting, and our furnishings look fabulous. “I want to live there,” I say to my husband as we toggle
through the pictures of our living room, our bedroom, our bathroom. And I mean it; I do want to live here,
but I know that we cannot.
The second week of February, we go to Florida for six
days. When we return our landlords
are entertaining three offers on the apartment. The best is from an all-cash buyer bidding their asking
price. The only catch is, he wants
to move in by April 1st.
“Would that be a problem?” Theresa asks over the phone. “Uh, sort of,” I reply honestly. Then I supplement my answer with some
nervous babble about how we don’t want to impede the sale, and if we had to I’m
sure we could make it work, and maybe we could put all our stuff in storage and
temporarily live with my husband’s parents on Long Island.
Fortunately, the very next day a new buyer makes an even
higher offer, and our landlords accept it. This buyer, Theresa assures me over the phone, does not need
to move into the apartment by any certain date, but in honor of my first year
contracts professor, Amy Boss, I have Theresa put it in writing that we can
reside in the apartment until April 30th.
February melts into March. We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with our traditional Shamrock
Shakes, begin decorating for Easter, and fill out our tournament brackets. The weekend before Easter, I receive
another phone call from Theresa.
“Bad news,” she says.
“Our buyers need to be out of their current living situation earlier
than expected, so we are closing on April 8th.”
“Oh my God,” is all I can think to say. April 8th is two weeks
away. “Theresa, I’m sorry, but it
is physically impossible for us to be out by then.”
I’m not trying to be melodramatic. It’s just that I’m six months pregnant, I have a 2 ½ year
old toddler, my husband works long hours, and the mere thought of cardboard boxes exhausts me. Unfortunately, Jeff
and Theresa, who for months have been two of the loveliest, most reasonable
people we’ve known, are suddenly not so lovely and reasonable.
“No,” Theresa says, “The bottom line is, you have to be out
by April 8th. Otherwise
our buyers will literally be
homeless.”
I despise the overuse of the word literally. Please look
up the word literally in the dictionary
then tell me if that is really what you mean.
Regardless, I reply in similar fashion: “Theresa, if we have
to move out by April 8th, we
will literally be homeless.”
“What about your in-laws?” she retorts.
There is a lesson to be learned here, folks: No matter how lovely and reasonable
your landlords seem, no matter how much they remind you of yourselves in five
years, never, ever share with them
that you have family living within a 50-mile radius. They will use it against you.
The lawyer in me wanted to fight. I could have argued that they were constructively evicting
us without cause, that once we terminated the old lease and agreed on the April
30th move-out date, we converted to a month-to-month tenancy, which,
under New York law, requires 30 days’ written notice from either party to
cancel. Instead, I handed the
phone to my husband and threw myself on our bed in a fit of tears.
In the end, we agreed to move out on Saturday, April 6th. Our landlords agreed to waive rent for
the six days in April that we’d reside in the apartment, and they agreed to pay
for our storage for the month of April.
We had two weeks to hire movers, buy packing materials, and figure out
how we were going to fit our life into a 10x13 storage unit.
I had a feeling it was going to require a lot of bubble wrap…
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