Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois
My girlfriend gave 1st month rent to a real estate company with her application, but she never signed a lease. Now she's changed her mind, but they won't give it back.
Timeline:
March 10th, 2011: She signed the following document: http://i.imgur.com/X7pml.png
That day, she submitted her check made out to the real estate agency (small firm - only 2 or 3 people on staff). They informed her by phone that her application was approved, and they immediately cashed the check. Again, no lease was signed.
March 14th, 2011: She called the real estate agency saying she changed her mind. They asked her to submit her request in writing, which she did the same day. We visited the agency to hand-deliver the letter and speak with them. The guy refused to give a time-frame by which he would respond to the letter, and he suggested that there was probably nothing he could do in terms of a refund.
May 1st, 2011: This is when she was expected to move in. The landlord still has plenty of time to find a renter.
I expect that the real estate rep will not grant any kind of a refund, or if he does, it will be a trivial amount. Despite the language of his receipt, I don't think he has grounds to keep her first month's rent.
We expect that we may have to take him to small claims court. Any advice, especially in terms of the merit of our case, is appreciated.
1 Answer from Attorneys
What they are trying to do is to say that this document (you only send a portion of it so the answer could change if there is more to it) is a contract by itself, where you irrevocably agree to enter into a lease if they accept you. Regardless of whether you agree to the lease itself. There's something wrong with that unless they gave you a copy of their form of lease to review before you applied; if you don't like the terms when they present it to you later, they want you stuck either way.... There are other issues too, such as whether the telephone calls are adequate to have accepted you, or what the contents were of the request to cancel. But fundamentally if they did NOT give you a copy of the lease form they use, filled in with the terms and conditions you expected, before you applied, then there are fundamental parts of the "total" contract (the lease itself, identifying the rental unit you applied for, term, monthly rent, security deposit amount, amenities, house rules, etc.) that are missing; theoretically they could present you with an onerous form of lease or one that attempted to substitute a different apartment or other terms, and if you don't agree to it they could keep your deposit under the same theory. Again there's something wrong with that. Alternatively if the apartment that was the intended rental is covered by the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, I would contend that the form you sent is an ill-fated attempt to bootstrap itself into a Chicago lease that fails to comply with the Ordinance and therefore you have a legal right to avoid it. A judge could disagree.
The response given is not intended to create, nor does it create an ongoing duty to respond to questions. The response does not form an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to be anything other than the educated opinion of the author. It should not be relied upon as legal advice. The response given is based upon the limited facts provided by the person asking the question. To the extent additional or different facts exist, the response might possibly change.
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