A lease mix-up leaves one renter paying the price…

After signing a lease and planning the move for six months, this Illinois renter received a shocking phone call just 10 days before move-in. Property management revealed that the current tenants mistakenly believed they had renewed their lease and asked the renter to choose another apartment instead. Although sympathetic to the longtime tenants, the renter questioned why they should bear the financial and logistical burden of a mistake they didn’t make, especially after already paying a deposit and first month’s rent.

What a complicated situation to be in. I’m a tenant, and I’ve been renting for more than a year now, and never had a problem like this before. Seems to be a big problem, considering the woman moving in has nowhere to go since her lease is about to end. I can feel how angry and disappointed she must be feeling when realizing the apartment she signed six months ago is more likely not going to be her next home…

I don’t really get how management «forgot» to let the current tenants of that apartment know that they will have to leave… At the end of the day is their job to keep all the tenants in place and have everyone with a place to go. There’re so many questions that I have right now, and I’m starting to worry about how this whole mix-up is going to affect the girl that was moving in: is she going to suffer some retaliation for a lease that’s already signed? Where are the current tenants of the apartment going to move? They have been living there for almost two decades…

Without a doubt, a very complicated situation. I really hope management takes full responsibility for their negligence: they have, at the moment, two families that have nowhere to go, and they have to fix this problem sooner or later. Now, a question for you: what would you do in a situation like this?