Increase in rent?

By One Hurtin' Hokie

I’m a student at Virginia Tech, and this year I’m living in the same apartment complex as I was last year. Because of roommate changes, I will now be living with a different number of roommates, and therefore we had to sign a new lease for a new apartment. In December we signed a lease saying that we would be paying X amount of rent per month for a 2 bedroom, unrennovated apartment. In April we signed the lease again, but this time for the specific apartment unit.

Now, 16 days before the lease is scheduled to start, the landlord has called us up to tell us that they made a mistake, forgot to put us into the system, and gave our apartment away to someone else. They told us that they are willing to move us to the last 2 bedroom apartment they have available, but because the new one is a rennovated apartment, they will be an increase in rent; an extra $18 a month. This is despite the fact that the new apartment is, in our opinion, in a much worse location than the original apartment we were supposed to have.

Now, I understand that logistically, there are people in what was going to be our apartment, and the landlord really can’t do anything about it now. So my roommate and I are willing to move to the new apartment, but we don’t want to pay extra for an apartment that we feel is in a worse location than the original one. We could really care less about the rennovations. The lease they signed specifies the amount we have to pay. We talked to them about this, and they told us that while the lease doesn’t give them permission to raise the rent, it doesn’t forbid them from raising the rent either.

My question is, What can I do about this? According to Virginia housing law, “No unilateral change in the terms of a rental agreement by a landlord or tenant shall be valid unless (i) notice of the change is given in accordance with the terms of the rental agreement or as otherwise required by law and (ii) both parties consent in writing to the change.” But the housing law also says that “. If the tenant does not sign and deliver a written rental agreement signed and delivered to him by the landlord, acceptance of possession or payment of rent without reservation gives the rental agreement the same effect as if it had been signed and delivered by the tenant.”

So, as I see it, the landlord is illegally changing the lease – because we have no time to find a new place to live, our plan is to pay the rent, but try and get a lawyer involved and make the landlord company abide by the contract they signed. But by moving in to the new apartment, are we giving our legal agreement to abide by a new lease (for more rent) even if we don’t sign anything? Can we deliver our rent to the landlord along with a letter stating that despite the fact that we are paying all of what they are charging us, we still believe that they are in the wrong and we will be investigating legal action against them? Would that be enough to say that we didn’t give our legal agreement to a new, unsigned lease?

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