Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia

Re: Automatic Lease Renewal

In answer to your two part question: yes to the first part and maybe to the second.

People are pretty much free to agree to just about anything in any kind of contract so long as the contract does not have an illegal or immoral purpose. For example, you couldn't write an enforceable agreement to maintain a moonshine still. The automatic renewal clause is legitimized in statutory law specifically for mobile or manufactured home parks at � 55-248.42:1, Code of Virginia of 1950, as amended.

It has never been disallowed by the appellate courts for any type of real estate lease, commercial or residential, to my knowledge. It is generally treated as an accepted (and acceptable) fact.

As far as suing you for and recovering the entire amount of the renewed lease, most landlords, although I believe they could, do not sue for the entire balance of the lease. What they do is file an unlawful detainer asking the court to order the tenant out and for a couple or so months of rent to cover the time it may take them to find another tenant. If, for legitimate market reasons, the landlord were unable to find another tenant I think the landlord could recover for the entire term of the lease.

Just don't miss sending that notice of non-renewal under the terms of the lease.

There is a reason they call those aggravating things "deadlines". If you cross that "line" without doing what you should've done, you're "dead", so to speak.