Leasing Property Flashcards
Fair Housing Act
Section 3604 prohibits discrimination in the form of
◦ refusing to rent or sell to any person because of “race, color, religion, sex, familial
status, or national origin
- Includes refusal to allow tenant to modify premises to allow him/her/them to
occupy/use entirety of premises (at tenant’s expense)
Prohibited landlord discrimination
- No overt discrimination (I refuse to rent to unmarried mothers)
◦ No discriminatory effect (“I just don’t think this apartment will work
for all of your four children.”)
◦ Note FHA exemptions (i.e., owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units, owner of no more than three single-family homes,
etc.
Good faith for denying tenant
- Bad credit
◦ Criminal history
◦ Net worth
◦ Not # of children
Immutable/ Default Rules
Immutable Rules- supersede any contract provisions in the lease, usually in order to protect vulnerable resident tenants.
Default Rules- fill in the gaps that the parties did not address in the lease. Parties are free to ignore default rule in lease negotiation, but they cannot evade immutable rule.
Leasehold- Years of Tenancy
o Once the term ends, tenants possessory right automatically expires and the landlord may retake possession of premises.
Leasehold- Periodic Tenancy
o Automatically renewed for successive periods unless the landlord or tenant terminates the tenancy by giving advance notice. (tenant has to give one months notice to terminate)
Leasehold- Tenancy at Will
o Continues only so long as both landlord and tenant desire.
o At common law, either party could end tenancy without any advance notice, today most states require advance notice, usually equal to the time between rental payments.
o Tenancy terminates automatically if either party dies, tenant abandons possession, or the landlord sells the property. (so if rent is due once a month, tenant would have to give one
month’s notice)
Leasehold- Tenancy at Sufferance
o Is created when a person who rightfully took possession of land continues in possession after that right ends
o It arises from the occupant’s improper conduct, not from an agreement.
o More a convenient label for at type of wrongful occupancy than a true estate
Lease v License
Lease
◦ Tenant has the right to use
◦ Tenant has the right to possess
◦ Owner cannot eject the tenant without advance notice and
must have a reason
◦ Tenant has the right to exclude
“License”
◦ Licensee has limited right to enter and use
◦ Licensee has no right to possession
◦ Owner can eject licensee for any reason, at any time
◦ Licensee has no right to exclude
Can you have a lease for the remainder of your life, or until you voluntarily vacate the premises?
NO. Rule – if lease does not specify a certain beginning date and end date of
the lease term, it is a tenancy at will by default
Lease- Statute of Frauds
Leases of real property with a term of greater
than 1 year must be in writing, and
◦ Contain parties’ names, property description,
duration, and rent.
Lease- Standard Forms Rule
Landlords cannot use standard forms to circumvent tenants’ legal rights
Delivering Possession (NASA office case)
Q: When a lease is silent as to a landlord’s duty to deliver physical possession, will the law impose such a duty?
Holding: Yes. A landlord has a duty to deliver physical possession when a lease is silent as to the landlord’s duty to deliver. American rule –
the landlord delivers legal right of possession to the tenant)
UCC limitation
- only limitation is that the obligations of good faith, diligence, reasonableness, and care imposed by the Code may not be disclaimed, although the parties may set forth the standards by which such obligations are to be measured.
UCC and leasing
- Care should be taken, however, to distinguish those situations where the drafters of Article 2A affirmatively rejected Article 2’s provisions as a model. Where legitimate differences between the
articles exist, blind adherence to “parallelism” would be unwarranted. As the Official Comments to the
2003 Amendments remind us: “Leasing is distinctive.”
