Didim Today

Managing a property and renting out one’s property are a popular way of making money for real estate investors. Whether commercial or residential, the quality of its income is always related to the quality of the tenant. If you have a good tenant who pays his rent on time and keeps the property as he found it when moving in, then you’ll have a good revenue. Otherwise, if you cannot collect the rent properly, your investment will not pay off.

In some cases you may have a good tenant but who suddenly wants to leave the premises. If the property is in Bodrum and if it is in the middle of winter, when you are unable to find any new tenant, then this is not good at all.

The following letter is about what needs to be done at the end of the term of a rental agreement. The e-mail reads as follows: “Dear Berk, I need some advice. My boyfriend any I have rented an apartment in Bodrum. We are both American. He received notices to renew the lease by the end of March, the last day of his current term. He ignored these notices because he is in the process of buying a condo and did not want to obligate himself for a full year.

Now the landlord sent him a letter telling him that if he does not surrender possession by the end of March, the lease will be deemed renewed for another one-year term, citing an article of the agreement. This section of the agreement is as follows: ‘Where the tenant fails to timely renew an expiring lease offered pursuant to this section, and remains in occupancy after expiration of the lease, such a lease may be deemed to have been renewed upon the same terms and conditions, as the legal regulated rental agreement.’ My question is this: Is the renewal ‘deemed’ by this section a ‘month-to-month tenancy’ or a ‘one-year tenancy,’ as the landlord claims? Any help you can provide will be very much appreciated.

Susan” Susan, I wish you’d sent me a copy of the contract so we could examine it here with the full picture in mind.

The language used, “upon the same terms and conditions,” is the language sometimes used with respect to holdover (month-to-month) tenancies. However, your agreement is based on a one-year period. Therefore, I would read this as the rental agreement being renewed for another year with the same conditions.

It is unclear if you are supposed to serve notice to the landlord or not. In many rental agreements there is an article providing that keeping silent upon receiving a notice implies that the parties accept the offer of the party sending the notice. Please check the rental agreement once more to make sure if you need to respond to this notice if you really are going to leave the premises.

If you do not leave the premises and if you do not respond to the landlord about your decision to leave the premises in one month, the landlord will have the right to claim one full year’s rent even if you want to leave the premises sooner.

Finally, it is always possible to amend or modify an agreement with the consent of the parties. You can either ask the landlord to discuss to modify the agreement for another month. He may be interested in this because it may not be easy to find a tenant in Bodrum during the winter season.

Berk Cektir http://www.berkcektir.av.tr/ The information provided here is intended to give basic legal information. You should get legal assistance from a licensed attorney at law while conducting legal transactions and not just rely on the information in this corner. http://www.todayszaman.com/ This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  .