Month To Month Rent After Extented Lease

[Zhihan Wan]

Good morning! Happy Friday! It's me again. We have one rental home has an extended lease with the tenants till the end of August. The tenants have a new home building nearby and the house is supposed to be closed in September. They asked if they can continue to stay and give month to month rent after August since the closing date is not in certain. The house is located in a fast developing area and we experienced this situation two years ago. The previous tenants actually moved out 2 months later as the initial closing date they gave us. It was in mid of October and we had the house vacant for 2.5 months to get the current tenants. I believe the rental market is more friendly to the houseowners between spring to summer time for a good ISD area. We don't want this situation happens again. Do we need to insist not signing for the month to month rent? Or should we take the month to month rent and probably the market won't be that bad this second half of the year? Thank you in advance!!

[Kevin Sobilo]

@Zhihan Wan, I would sign with them month-to-month but charge MORE for rent.

If you don't allow them to stay, they will likely need to go to a long term stay hotel or something else similarly expensive PLUS pay for storage for their belongings, PLUS pay to move their belongings twice rather than once.

You could probably charge them 20% more rent and they are still better off staying on month-to-month. This compensates you for any potential extra vacancy time during an off-season turnover.