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Tenancy Problems - Most Recent Answers
Q:
First off, sorry if this is really long, and I apologize for that. I believe that this situation requires quite a bit of explaning, and neither TRAC nor the Tenants Act could help us much here.
My wife and I signed a one year fixed term lease, and have to break to contract because I have been transfered out of the city. My wife is on maternity leave without an EI cheque, so there is no way she can afford rent. I am scheduled to leave this friday on Sept 12th. We paid the full rent for September.
We submitted a letter to the landlord on Aug. 30/08, and they gave us written permission to assign the apartment on Sept. 03/08 after much argument. They with-held their consent until we showed them the tenancy act in person.
My wife has posted over 10 ads in total over craigslist, kijiji, 247apartments, and rentsline. She has brought in 24 people to date, and there were three people interested in the apartment so far. Unfortunately, one of them changed his mind, and the other one is waiting until Friday to confirm. We have kept records of all these people, along with their phone numbers.
On Sept 03/08 evening, we received an application from a young couple who were very much interested in renting the apartment. The girl is a Native Canadian, and her boyfriend is a mechanical apprentice. I referred them immediately to the landlord, and they had a chat at their home. The following day, I spoke to the landlord and asked them what they thought, and whether or not they are suitable tenants. The landlord hesitated and answered, "I have much reservation to rent to them because the boy's appearance is kind of dirty and the girl is Native". Of course that wasn't a good enough reason and I demanded that they reconsider. Not to mention that they are violating human rights code. Again, we showed him what the Act states about discrimination. I called the landlord up again a day later, and he said that they do not think they are suitable because they have low income. With their combined income, it sits at $27/hour, with both of them working full time. That is how much I make, yet they still rented the apartment out to us without so much as a blink of an eye. Then then said that their credit references were poor, which is also not true since my wife and I had their permission to do our own credit check, which we did. The girl's admitted wasn't the best, but her boyfriend's credit had no problems. Their employers praised them, and said they are great candidates and there is no way they would have any trouble paying rent. Again, I have this in writing from the employers.
Now, it is 7 days later, and they still have not yet told the young couple whether they have approved or disapproved their application. During this time, I asked my wife to speak to their references and check everything out so that the landlord cannot reject them any further. It turns out the landlord hadn't even contacted their employers or their references! I then received a phone call from the couple saying that they will not be taking the apartment anymore since they have been waiting for too long and they need a place to move into.
I suppose, what I would like to know is what are my legal options as to getting back the 2 weeks rent which we could have potentially got if the landlord wasn't taking his sweet time. Not to mention he is trying to slap us with advertising costs, repair costs, and the time he took to "check references". He told us that he wants to advertise in newspapers because the people that call him from craigslist are "not the type of people he wants" Did I mention we found HIM through craigslist?
As far as I can see, the landlord seems to be doing nothing to mitigate his losses. My wife and I have done everything we can to keep this fair. We're already paying for a broken door that wasn't even our responsibility as a sign of good faith. We've brought people in, gotten applications, showed the apartment until 11pm at night after work, all in time for when the apartment is going to be vacant. If the young couple rented this apartment, there would be no loss on either side of the party.
In my opinion, this apartment could have been rented out very quickly to good tenants if they weren't discriminatory, and taking so long to do any sort of reference checks. Furthermore, we wouldn't be in this situation, and we would have already ended the tenancy. Now, I believe that they are obviously trying to hose us for all we're worth, and making us pay for the remainder of the lease. I also believe they will do whatever they can to hold onto the damage deposit.
Any advice is appreciated as to what to do with this situation.
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| A:
Your question, if I understand correctly, is what happens next, given that the landlord has taken his time in re-renting and hasn't quickly warmed to your choice of sublet/assign. The issue becomes one of your contention that the landlord is unreasonably withholding consent and his of not wanting to rent to people he hasn't adequately checked out. If the landlord chooses to pursue you for lost rent/ damages, you'll be into an argument in front of a dispute resolution officer, and he gets to sort out who owes what to whom and how much. In such a case you'll want to have documentation of your notice and efforts you've made to handle the situation in a fashion consistent with the RTO policy on assignments/sublets, which is found on the Residential Tenancy website at http://www.rto.gov.bc.ca/ and also at http://www.rto.gov.bc.ca/documents/ For more info on assignments and sublets, and how they play out in my experience, check the archives on the apartmentguide.ca website |
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