I live in Laurel MD. I have a clause of automatic renewal for my apartment lease if I fail to give a termination written notice.

Real Estate 7 views 1 answers
The clause states that the lease will be renewed according to the terms of a notice sent by landlord 90 days prior to the expiration of my lease. It also states that if a fail to give them a written notice that I want to terminate my lease at least 60 days before my lease expiration date, then their notice will be effectively enforced. I admit I didn't send a notice until 30 days prior expiration of the lease. However I didn't receive any notice from the landlord either. They showed me a copy of it but not the proof it was sent. It seems to me we are both in breach here. Can I challenge that and change the terms of my lease to a month-to-month since both parties are in breach? Also, the notice they showed me has so many mistakes such as: new lease starts 06/16/2015, ends 06/15/2015

Attorney Answer

1
Michael Ostroff ·
A review of the original, and alleged new, lease should be undertaken by an attorney. A lease renewal provision must be "directly set apart from any other provision . . . and provide a a space for written acknowledgement. So, a renewal of the original lease terms, may be enforceable if yo acknowledged the provision and did not give proper termination notice. However, I think it will be difficult for the landlord to enforce a "new" lease with additional or modified terms, since you never acknowledged receipt or acquiesence to those terms. You may be able to use this to negotiate a mutual termination of the renewed original lease.
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