I applied for an apartment near my university and filled out everything on the application, except for a grayed out box for Lease Term which could not be edited and was set to 12 months. They pre-approved me and sent me a lease to sign within 24 hours to reserve a spot while they finish the approval process. In that lease it states that rent is a, "Base contract of $12360, payable in 12 equal installments of $1030, on or before lease commencement date & on the 1st day of each mth until end of contract. The contract amount is not prorated unless otherwise noted."
The problem is that the lease is for 11 months and 11 days, not 12 months. This means the rent is actually between $1087 per month and $1124 per month depending on how it is divided up (dividing by 11.366 vs 11) in addition to the fact that I would not be covered for the full 12 months I applied for. When I called they apartment and brought this up they said it was correct, "if you want to look at it that way." That's not looking at it any specific way, that's how the math works out. The rent is not what they say it is.
It also states elsewhere in the lease that, "We may, at our option, require at any time that you pay all rent and other sums in one single payment by any method we specify." It seems that this means that we'll pay $1030 for 10 months, then $2060 our last month.
I called the apartment to ask them if this was a mistake and they said it is, "very very standard," for student housing and if I go anywhere else they will have the same system. So, is this sort of thing very very standard? Is it even legal? It seems like bait-and-switch to me.
Thank you.
Submitted May 08, 2019 at 10:34AM by AnguisMors http://bit.ly/2Hb15lC
