Being kicked out of apartment rental when building is sold

My Google-fu is strong

http://www.megalaw.com/ny/top/nylandlord.php

Try searching under New York State Tenant Rights - tons of stuff. You'll find some thing that will work for you.

Good luck

I'm not in the same area, but I've got a bit of a similar experience. I'll PM with the details in case you can get any ideas out of the story.

I met a woman in a wheelchair, in NY, begging. She said she complained because her roof was leaking and her landlord refused to fix it. The authorities (?) came and inspected the property, wrote to the landlord, told him he would have to do certain repairs. The landlord wouldn't spend the money, so the property was (I don't know what the correct term is) declassified? condemned? Anyway, the woman in the wheelchair had to leave because the building was classed no longer fit for human habitation.

When I met her, she was begging in hopes of collection $25 which would pay for a night in a hostel.

Some welfare system!

If you need the move things along even faster, you could have the rental property be foreclosed on. If the land lord is a jerk, they might not tell the renter that the property went into foreclosure.

So, owner/ landlord defaults on mortgage. Foreclosure proceedings take places. Most states then have a Sheriff's Auction where the property is sold. In Michigan, you have 6 months to redeem the mortgage (pay up all past due money.) Then, at the end of that six months, you are evicted. You can stay until the Sheriff's deputy shows up and tells you to move out.

For your story purposes, if this so fits your needs, you could have the landlord not say anything about the foreclosure (and keep collecting the rent checks!) then the renter finds out they're evicted when the Sheriff's dept. shows up and kicks them out. The sheriff will change the locks on the door and may watch (or help) move things out of the house.

Just a thought. You'd of course need to research the exact foreclosure laws in your location as they do very from place to place. But a jerk landlord can mean a no-notice eviction.

Anecdotal stories are alway valuable. Just remember that the rules and rights vary from state to state, so the story of someone in Michigan, or Ohio, or Texas - might not be usefull to a story set in Upstate New York. Even NYC laws are different in some regards to state laws.

That's why I sent the links. You'll have to check back to the actual laws, to make sure your scenario is probable.

This may not be helpful enough, but my friend just moved last week from one house (so not an apartment) to another because the house went into foreclosure by its owner and the bank took it over. Leslie, my friend, actually received a summons to go to court to learn about the decision on her home. She had really hoped that her family could remain there since they had never missed a payment and were ideal tenants, but the judge ruled that she and her family had to vacate the premises asap. This was not in NY.

This differs state to state. If your story has an actual location, see if that town or city has a landlord/tenant office. Some states also have landlord/tenant laws. In some places, the current lease would still apply even if the apartment house changes owners, but if it's a month to month, well they might have to be out by the end of the month, the end of the month plus 30 days or other.

All real estate is local!

CurranCR said:

Clair, I've read about stories like that! Horrible. I think I want the pressure on my protagonist to be more slow building, though. Kind of a sense of impending doom. Strangers in suits are poking around the building, the landlord lives far away and no one knows what's going on.

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Foreclosure would work well for that. It can take time, particularly if the owner (here the landlord) is trying to negotiate with the lender to avoid foreclosure.

Generally speaking, if you buy a property that someone is renting, you can't just throw the tenants out. All you're buying is what the seller has to give: he has (1) the title to the property, but also (2) various encumbrances on the property, such as any leases he may have signed with tenants. He can't make the leases stop existing by selling the building to someone else. Leases are rights in property--as a tenant, you keep having those rights even if someone else buys it. But you lose those rights on foreclosure because the bank's rights in the building trump everyone else's (to put it simply).

CurranCR said:

WriteKnight, I looked at the NYS Tenant's Rights site and I think I found the scenario I want. She pays the rent month-to-month, with no lease. (I've done that twice, renting in upstate NY). That means either party can terminate, for any reason, with a month notice. It also means there's no limit on rent increases. So, her landlord could sell the place or just decide to do slight renovations and double the rent.

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Yep. Again, if he sold it without giving her notice, the next owner would have to give her a month's notice. But not more than that, unless there's some other pro-tenant law in effect where she lives.