Tenant approved, lease is not signed yet, can we back out ?

[Sunny Hande]

Hi All,

This is my first post. We moved to a new house and are planning on renting our current house.

We have a property manager who gave application to 2 parties out of which the 1st party didn't meet the criteria but 2nd party did meet the criteria & has been approved. Party has signed/filled the rental application and paid for application screening. Our property manager has informed the party that they have been approved and they can move-in within 2 weeks but we don't want to rent our place to the 2nd party - is it legally possible to back out now ? we haven't signed anything yet and neither has our property manager signed anything with the tenants accept for screening their rental application and taking the application screening fee of $40 per adult.

House we are planning on renting is a 4 bedroom 1954 house with 1 bath in Portland Oregon ( frankly 3 bedroom and 1 media room which opens via sliding door to the backyard but does have a closet). Family planning to move in has 2 adults and 7 kids and we don't think the house can handle 9 people especially the toilet/bathroom with old sewage/septic system. We also are concerned about the washer/drying and the plumbing issues.

Any help in this regards will greatly appreciated.

[Linda Weygant]

You can not discriminate against a prospect based on family size.  If they meet the legal requirements for occupancy then you can not reject them based on this.  The fact that they have already been approved verbally means that if you back out now, you have just set yourself up for a virtually unwinnable lawsuit.

Here in Colorado, the number of legal occupants is #of bedrooms X 2 +1, so for your 4 bedroom, it would be 9 people as legal occupancy and that family would be permitted and allowed.

Find out what your legal occupancy legal is for related individuals (it is usually different for unrelated individuals).  If they are within that legal limit, I think that the odds of them suing you for discrimination is way too high and I would bite the bullet and go ahead and rent.