(TV) Re: TV Digest V1 #194

[ehsu@mindspring.com]

Hey SecretX,

How long is your lease?  I think rent controlled apartments have one or two year leases, is that correct in your case?  So your landlord is trying to buy the rest of the lease (for the year or for the rest of the year plus one year)?  Do you really want to sell the lease or would you rather have your landlord fix your apartment?  Presumanly, you can save more money by having your landlord fix your apartment, get a new kitchen, etc. and pay a little more, than trying to find a completely new apartment?  

Selling and buying a lease should be illegal, so I wonder if it actually is enforceable in court (maybe on the ground that it is a contract anyway).  Don't know.  Never thought about it.  

It seems that an estimate of the price should be based on the amount of rent you could save by staying put and by how much more your landlord could charge by getting you out.  I am not so sure that he can acutally get market value for your apartment if you sell your lease unless he spends money to completely fix it up because there are limits on how much a landlord can increase the rent on a rent-controlled apartment when an old tenant moves out.  Can you really find an apartment that cheap elsewhere?  Why not just ask him to fix your apartment and charge you, let's say, $700 or $800 for it instead of $500?  

I guess that the other illegal thing that you can do, if you were very naughty, is to make your landlord fix your apartment, keep the lease, sublease the apartment out for $1,500, while you find a cheaper place to live.  That's, of course, very very bad (but at least not criminal, unlike the other things that some other people suggested).

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