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Verbal Rent Increase

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cooper13

Junior Member
Missouri
Our lease was up at end of June. Our agreement lets us go month to month with 30 day notice to terminate. Landlord verbally told us that rent was increasing on July 1st. We paid the increased rent amount for July.

After we paid we noticed that the lease agreement says "Modification: The parties hereby agree that this document contains the entire agreement between the parties and this agreement shall not be modified, changed, altered or amended in any way expect through a written amendment signed by all the parties hereto.

We gave notice of the 30 days on July 22nd. Our question is for the pro rated rent from August 1st to August 21st do we pro rate based on the verbal increased rent amount or can we default back to the agreement and pro rate from the previous rent amount since the rent increase was never in writing and signed by all parties?

Also, are we correct in that since it said that we only have to give 30 day notice to terminate and we gave notice in middle of month that the next month would be pro rated to equal the total 30 days?
 


Gail in Georgia

Senior Member
This is the actual statute for proving this notice for termination of a month to month tenancy in your state:

https://law.justia.com/codes/missouri/2005/t29/4410000060.html

It appears that the lease would terminate at the end of the normal date you pay your rent. For example, if you pay on the 1st of each month, the lease would terminate on the last day of the previous month.

And while it appears the rent increase should have been in writing, you did pay the increased rate in July. Don't be surprised if you pay only the previous rate for August the additional amount will come out of any security deposit you provided at the beginning of your lease.

Gail
 

cooper13

Junior Member
Thank you.

Even though the statute states 1 month notice does our written agreement which says
Holdover
"Should tenant remain in possession of the premises with the consent of Landlord after the natural expiration of this lease, a new month to month tenancy will be created between landlord and tenant, which shall be subject to all terms and conditions of this agreement. This new lease may be terminated with in 30 days written notice by either party. The tenant and the cosigner of this lease will remain responsible for rent during the intial and successive terms and during any holdover period."

Does the agreement we signed saying 30 days instead of 1 month notice supercede?
 

HRZ

Senior Member
Verbal acquiescence to a new rent may be hard to LL to enforce going forward given the written language he wrote in lease ...but I give no odds on being able to retroactively correct for a payment already willingly made.
 

FarmerJ

Senior Member
When written leases convert to month to month cooper13 everything but the term -length of the lease stays the same, SO if a lease was set up that NO Pets were allowed then that doesn't change , your lease as long is it clearly said 30 days notice then the notice can be mid month, If the LL wanted it to be a whole rental period of rent then thats what they would have had to write into the lease.
 

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