Landlord Question and Answer Forum

Are tenant lease is up May 31, 2012. We asked her in December 2011 would she be interested in renewing? She answered yes in January 2012 she agreed with all the terms of the lease. While she send us a notice on March 31, 2012 saying that she didn't want to renew. Can the email be used as a binding contract or agreement?

sorry for the typo Our tenant

Posted by Alexis B, MD on Monday, April 2, 2012

If a lease renewal was not signed, it prob would not hold any legal weight.

Posted by Jessica B, MD on Tuesday, April 3, 2012

I would have to say no. That is what leases are for, they are legally binding documents that "bind" a renter to "said" agreement. An email would be more of a spoken agreement, I do not think it would hold up in any court of law. That would be nice though wouldn't it? then we could forgo all leases and just use emails lol.

Posted by James H, WA on Wednesday, April 4, 2012

A "digitally signed" secure document form, such as "pdf" sent through email can be somewhat binding. But if it was challenged in court with being tampered with, the burden of proof would be on you to prove it was not, and that would be very difficult and expensive to prove.

Posted by Greg S, CA on Wednesday, April 4, 2012

If tenant hadn’t signed a contract renewal, there isn’t much you can do. However, hopefully the contract stated that when the lease expired and tenant continued to remain on property, the lease continued on a month-to-month. Assuming this to be true, tenant would still be required to give you proper notice that they are vacating the property. Consider the following. Why would you want to force a tenant from moving if this is their intent? Get the notice and start finding a new tenant. Or, you can also suggest keeping them on a month-to-month. This may be more agreeable to them than being locked up for another year. Find out why they want to move. This all depends on what you’re willing to accept.

Posted by Bob R, CA on Wednesday, April 4, 2012