Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Florida

Please help! We received notice from our landlord in August saying that he has filed for bankruptcy and it includes the house we are renting in Florida. We signed a one year lease which began March, 2009. In this notice he also stated that he will be applying for a loan modification and said he would not collect any more rent until he can show us proof that the loan is secured. After researching (which we probably should have done before we rented the place) we found that this house has been in foreclosure since October, 2008 and this was stopped in July, 2009 by filing bankruptcy. I believe a notice was sent to our house to inform us of the foreclosure but we sent it back because it was addressed to the previous tenants and thought it was for them. I have now sent a letter to the courts to inform them that we are the current tenants. Well, as per the landlord, we did not pay the September rent putting it aside to save for either finding a new place or to give to the bank if they decided to allow us to stay until our lease was up. Now we received a notice today saying that he is in negotiation with the bank for the modification and he still retains ownership of the house. He says it is not in foreclosure at this time and the bank is asking for a payment in order to modify. His attorney has informed us that he still owns the house so he should be collecting rent and will do so starting October 1st. After researching online, I do understand that we are responsible to keep paying the rent and we will. I guess my question after all of this is what kind of rights if any do we have? When we moved in we gave him a $500 deposit and last month's rent. If the modification doesn't go through and we receive a notice to evict, will we get that money back? I guess we would like any suggestions of what we should be doing to protect ourselves in all of this. Thank you so much for your help! :)


Asked on 9/14/09, 9:56 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Sarah Grosse Sarah Grosse, Esquire

I'm not sure what kind of help you want. Absent your knowledge that all this is going on, nothing has changed. You continue to pay rent as long as you live there. When you leave, either you have paid the last month's rent, in which case you get the pre-paid last month's rent back, or you don't pay it, and the pre-paid last month's rent actually pays for the last month's rent. When you move out, if the place does not need repairs, you get your security deposit back. Any eviction or deposit returns would proceed according to the regular rules of procedure.

You can ask the landlord if he will let you break the lease, and then you can go find another place to live.

Read more
Answered on 9/15/09, 8:48 am


Related Questions & Answers

More Landlord & Tenants questions and answers in Florida