Can a new owner terminate a lease upon purchase ?

[Josh Southern]

Looking a at nice muti-family.

The good:

One 3/2 house with 3.5 year tenets that are month to month right now.

Two 1/1 apartments over a 4 stall garage (which is not used by tenets)

The bad: after showing but before I put in offer; current owner signed new leases for both apartments, with the following issues:

- let one tenet (his elderly family member) move in

- with no deposit and owner is paying utilities.

Rented the other apartment, and got a deposit. But also included utilities.

Now I know some places it’s fine and normal to pay utilities. Where I live (WV) it’s uncommon and I’m not comfortable doing that.

Final issue: the house also has utilities included, but on MTM, I’m not worried about changing that.

Now here’s the issue: I want to cancel the lease for the apartments and get the deposit for the one unit, and have them pay utilities.

Under what sis can I do that?? And is it legal??

[Mike McCarthy]

I would adjust your offer based on the new information. Tell the seller you were going to offer $200K, but because now you’re on the hook for deposits, lower rent, etc, you e adjusted your offer to $187K (or whatever makes sense). Being stuck in a year lease will impact your bottom line, but isn’t necessarily a reason to run away. Make sure it works for you!