Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Washington

Re: appt rental question

Assuming for a moment that you are a month to month tenant and you wanted to end your lease by June 30, then you need to give notice no later than June 10 (20 days in advance). If you give notice on June 15, then you are stuck through July 31.

As for getting the notice to the landlord, the law does not care whether they are in their office or not. You should mail your notice by certified mail with a return receipt, so that you can prove when it was delivered, so that there is never a question of whether notice was timely given. The fact that you were trying to personally deliver this and had questions for the landlord will not excuse this problem.

Why you would not get your security deposit back is a mystery to me. I'd have to see your lease or get more information about the landlord's basis to that claim, but so far, that does not make sense to me. Maybe what you meant is that if the landlord does not get paid rent for July, they plan to withdraw that from the security deposit?

If that is the case, the landlord also has a duty to immediately list the unit for rent, to try to minimize your damages. Thus if they can rent it out by July 10, you ought to be entitled to a pro-rated credit against the remaining 20 days that the new tenant will come in on.

I'd write to the landlord (by certified return receipt) to ask for copies of the ads they have placed or copies of other proof that the landlord has actively been trying to rent the unit since they received your notice. If the landlord has not been reasonably behaving in that respect, you may be able to get an offset of the rent they try to keep from the security deposit.

This would require small claims court action (assuming we're talking about less than $4,000 total dmaages). I hope this helps, although I recognize this is not exactly what you wanted to read.