Learn Your Lease – Written Notice Requirement

Part 2 – Written Notice Required

We are kicking off our Learn Your Lease series talking about something that is very important – the obligation to give written notice. If you review your lease or take a look at your state’s landlord-tenant law, you’ll see that notice is something that is mentioned over and over again. As we’ve talked about in other blog posts, including here  https://protenantagency.fairness4tenants.com/repairs/tips-for-tenants-to-get-wall-street-sfr-landlord-to-make-repairs/, notice is crucially important in protecting your rights as a tenant. We’ve talked about why it is Wall Street landlords, like American Homes 4 Rent, are willing to invest millions of dollars into “maintenance” call centers or hotlines. Spoiler alert – they don’t do this to help tenants. In fact, the big corporate landlords often use these tactics combined with lease provisions as a way to prevent or delay tenants being able to enforce their rights. Notice requirements are one of the most frequently used tricks. In this entry, we’ll teach you about notice, why it is important , and what you need to do to protect yourself against your landlord’s tricks.

Black’s Law Dictionary says that “notice” is a legal notification or warning that is delivered in a written format. (https://thelawdictionary.org/notice-2/) Why is understanding notice important for tenants? Because nearly every state’s landlord-tenant law requires a landlord to provide tenants with notice of certain things and for tenants to provide landlords with notice of certain things – like the need for repairs or an intent to end the tenancy. To start getting an understanding of how important notice is, Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code, which is the section that deals with residential tenancies, uses the word “notice” 184 times.

This Learn Your Lease series started with an introduction. If you haven’t read Part 1, which you can find here  https://protenantagency.fairness4tenants.com/uncategorized/learn-your-lease-part-1/, we you warned that some landlords will use the lease to make it more difficult for tenants to know, understand, and enforce their rights. One of the ways they do this is by intentionally leaving out important things that a tenant should know or by including conflicting lease provisions. For an example, let’s take a look at some provisions dealing with notice from American Homes 4 Rent’s lease.

It just makes since that you should have to give your landlord notice before they can be held responsible for making a needed repair while you are living in the house, right? So, let’s see what the American Homes 4 Rent lease tells tenants to do to give notice of repairs – here is Paragraph 9(b) directly from the AH4R lease:

As you can see, the AH4R lease tells tenants that they must call the maintenance hotline or use the online tenant portal to notify landlord of a need for major repairs. What do state landlord-tenant laws say about notice of repairs? Let’s see –

As you can see, there is no question but that in many states a tenant cannot hold the landlord legally responsible for making repairs until the tenant has given the landlord written notice. With this being the case, why would AH4R demand that tenants call in repairs? It seems to us for one reason only – to prevent tenants from enforcing their rights and being able to hold American Homes 4 Rent legally responsible.

Think this is bad? It is, but this isn’t the worst. AH4R knows that tenants need to provide written notice in order to really hold it responsible and/or take action against it. How can we say this with certainty? Because it is right there in your lease agreement:

To protect your tenant rights, make sure that for whatever it is that you are communicating with your landlord about – repairs, amenities access, your notice to end the lease, or anything else – you follow up your telephone call with written notice. If you rent from AH4R, your lease says that email is considered written notice, so a quick email will suffice. If you rent from another company, be sure to look at your lease to see exactly how and where you must provide written notice.

Has the requirement to give notice ever affected you as a tenant? Did you ever experience a delay in making repairs? Were you unable to recover your security deposit because you didn’t make a written objection in time? On the other hand, did giving written notice help you enforce your rights? Were you able to withhold rent or receive a rent credit because you gave proper notice about your landlord’s failure to do something? We’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment sharing your story.