Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Pennsylvania

Lease Contract for Apartment of Students

My son, age 21, is a University student living off campus in a large apartment complex. He and his roommate pay $1590/month and would like to early terminate their lease due to financial burden. 30 day notice can be submitted but they will be charged an early termination fee of $3975 which cuts off all liability for the remaining of the lease term till January 2007. After reviewing a copy of the original lease contract we noticed the owner or owner representative did not sign the lease agreement after the students initialled all pages at the bottom. Does the contract remain binding if the owner did not sign???


Asked on 5/31/06, 7:24 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Roger Traversa Arjont Group (Law Office of Roger Traversa)

Re: Lease Contract for Apartment of Students

The contract really must be reviewed. In real estate a contract MUST be in writing and a reviewing court would give great deference to the written contract. It is also true that a contract must be signed by the party to be charged.

Now if the boys had a claim, such as breach ore default, against the landlord and they pressed that claim they may be barred because of the lack of signature. In this case, the party to be charged would be the boys and they have signed the document. But, even without the landlord's actual signature many courts would interpret the contract as "signed" by the landlord where the boys accepted the contract as offered by the landlord.

The boys can attempt to negotiate with the landlord but should not hold out much hope. One possible resolution would be to arrange for another party to lease the premises thereby minimizing the landlord's damages.

Regards,

Roger Traversa

email: [email protected]

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Answered on 6/01/06, 10:48 am


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