I Had A Housemate...What would you do?

Nolapete

Nolapete

Monster Tank Builder
May 29, 2007
5,274
1
0
New Orleans, LA
I had a housemate move out after only giving 10 days notice.

He was told via email prior to moving in the terms of deposit return: 30 days notice, rent current, and the room as it was before he moved in.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the email conversation. He had insisted on having the terms in writing, so I didn't think I'd need to keep it at the time.

He's threatening to take me to court.

His deposit was less than half of the rent amount.

I told him that by not giving 30 days notice he forfeited the deposit.

I wasn't able to get anyone in the room for 12 days after he moved out, so I lost that amount of rent which was a little less than the deposit amount.

His last email claims that he obtained legal "advise" (go figure he can't even spell advice) that he should ask me one last time. He says that according to the law for month to month renting he's within his rights only giving 10 days notice.

I have spoken to an attorney friend and he told me I'm well within my rights and the law, though I haven't talked to him about this last email I received. I'll do that this weekend when I go over to visit.

What would you do?
 
WIthout a written agreement between you it is going to be difficult to prove what you agreed upon. You could take him to small claims court, but the court costs would probably be more than the verdict.

I'd keep the money, and let him try to sue me...
 
Judge Judy let her deal with him.
 
he probably doesn't even have legal advice and is just trying to scare you into giving in. what a bad housemate. I can only imagine what he was like to live with.
 
Specific landlord-tenant laws vary state by state. You can find out exactly how they're written and are applied in your state by going to the state's .gov site and looking through the "revised statutes." You should also be able to find a tenant or landlord-tenant hotline for just this sort of information. (Call legal assistance in your area, they'll refer you to that hotline number.)

What I would do ... you have the deposit, he didn't give sufficient notice (as agreed), and he doesn't know you didn't keep that written agreement. Don't tell him you deleted that and keep the money. Let him sue you. Odds are very low that he will actually do it. And if he does, then he has to do either one of two things: (1) Produce his own copy of the written agreement to prove that there was one in writing. (He won't do that because it also proves he gave insufficient notice - thus losing the case he claims to have).... or (2) Tell the judge there was nothing in writing... in which case, this becomes a verbal agreement only (your word against his) and the Judge will likely apply his or her own idea of what is "fair" and "reasonable" based on what's commonly agreed upon in most other landlord-tenant disputes. I would think this will be the 30-day notice requirement. So, again, he loses the case and pays court costs.
 
If you have spoken to an attorney already, I would advise you to do as he /she said and forget about asking anything on a public forum. We come from too many different places and different laws to have any relevance to your location.
 
Kashta said:
Specific landlord-tenant laws vary state by state. You can find out exactly how they're written and are applied in your state by going to the state's .gov site and looking through the "revised statutes." You should also be able to find a tenant or landlord-tenant hotline for just this sort of information. (Call legal assistance in your area, they'll refer you to that hotline number.)

What I would do ... you have the deposit, he didn't give sufficient notice (as agreed), and he doesn't know you didn't keep that written agreement. Don't tell him you deleted that and keep the money. Let him sue you. Odds are very low that he will actually do it. And if he does, then he has to do either one of two things: (1) Produce his own copy of the written agreement to prove that there was one in writing. (He won't do that because it also proves he gave insufficient notice - thus losing the case he claims to have).... or (2) Tell the judge there was nothing in writing... in which case, this becomes a verbal agreement only (your word against his) and the Judge will likely apply his or her own idea of what is "fair" and "reasonable" based on what's commonly agreed upon in most other landlord-tenant disputes. I would think this will be the 30-day notice requirement. So, again, he loses the case and pays court costs.
Click to expand...

Will you be my friend? :owned: Seriously, this is an outstanding plan of attack.
 
I feel like just telling him that if he doesn't have a copy of the email I sent him with the terms, he can have his attorney subpoena Google Gmail and have it obtained from their offline backup servers. It's my understanding that they don't delete anything off of those servers for this very reason.
 
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