Hello,
I have been reading through the forums and am hoping for some help here. We agreed to rent a townhouse in a complex in Baltimore, MD. Unfortunately, the living conditions are not what we expected and we would really like to move. In order to do so, we would have to break the lease.
The reasons we would like to move are:
- the neighbours are ridiculously noisy - I don't think that we sleep through the night more than 2 times in any given week.
- one neighbour actually threatened us - we reported this to the property management and their only response was that they would put it on file and perhaps not renew their rental agreement when it came up for review.
- the grounds are not maintained: garbage is allowed to sit for days at a time and as a dog owner, I fear for her what with all the broken glass, chicken bones and general garbage. This is compounded by the fact that the property has ticks!!!
- it takes the rental managment FOREVER to get things fixed. I'm still waiting for repairs that were supposed to have happened over a month ago!
- the feral cats in the neighbourhood have attacked our dog on more than one occassion - yes.. I swear it's the truth!
- there is quite a bit of suspected drug activity (selling drugs) on the premises. Unfortunately, we have no way of proving this other than heresay (smelling the pot off the balconys won't count, I'm assuming)
Now, when we signed the lease we were told we would get a copy. That never happened. When we asked for a copy - they copied the first page and gave that to us. As of this point, we have never recieved a copy of the lease, however, working off of memory only, I don't believe that there was a clause which would allow us to break the lease with a penalty. Neither do we expect that they would be reasonable.
Is there any way to get out of a lease legally? I have never broken a lease before in all my years of renting, but conditions here seriously leave much to be desired.
If you can help - I'd appreciate it.
Mo
I have been reading through the forums and am hoping for some help here. We agreed to rent a townhouse in a complex in Baltimore, MD. Unfortunately, the living conditions are not what we expected and we would really like to move. In order to do so, we would have to break the lease.
The reasons we would like to move are:
- the neighbours are ridiculously noisy - I don't think that we sleep through the night more than 2 times in any given week.
- one neighbour actually threatened us - we reported this to the property management and their only response was that they would put it on file and perhaps not renew their rental agreement when it came up for review.
- the grounds are not maintained: garbage is allowed to sit for days at a time and as a dog owner, I fear for her what with all the broken glass, chicken bones and general garbage. This is compounded by the fact that the property has ticks!!!
- it takes the rental managment FOREVER to get things fixed. I'm still waiting for repairs that were supposed to have happened over a month ago!
- the feral cats in the neighbourhood have attacked our dog on more than one occassion - yes.. I swear it's the truth!
- there is quite a bit of suspected drug activity (selling drugs) on the premises. Unfortunately, we have no way of proving this other than heresay (smelling the pot off the balconys won't count, I'm assuming)
Now, when we signed the lease we were told we would get a copy. That never happened. When we asked for a copy - they copied the first page and gave that to us. As of this point, we have never recieved a copy of the lease, however, working off of memory only, I don't believe that there was a clause which would allow us to break the lease with a penalty. Neither do we expect that they would be reasonable.
Is there any way to get out of a lease legally? I have never broken a lease before in all my years of renting, but conditions here seriously leave much to be desired.
If you can help - I'd appreciate it.
Mo