Request for credit check is 5 months too late

Question: I moved into my San Fernando Valley apartment about five months ago and was approved without a credit check. Now there are new property owners who want a check.

I’m not sure I want them to run it. If it comes back bad, can I lose the apartment? Do I have to release this information to them?

Answer: The new owners cannot require you to give them credit-check information after you have lived in the apartment for five months.

They also cannot evict you for not giving them that information or for not approving the running of a credit check.

As a result of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, those who run credit checks are required to get written authorization to do them from those whose credit they are checking, even if they have all of the information to do the checks.

The buyers knew, or should have known, that there was no credit information available on you when they bought the building.

If that was an important issue to them, they should have negotiated at that time for a better price with the former owners.

It is too late for them to require a credit check of you or to require you to provide them with credit information.

New owners must refund deposit

Question: I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Westchester. A realty company managed it when I first moved in. After I lived here for a while, the company did not renew my lease and put me on a month-to-month tenancy.

The property subsequently was sold to a couple with whom I still have a month-to-month tenancy.

No lease agreement was ever signed with them.

If and when I decide to move, who will be responsible for the return of my security deposit?

Answer: The couple who owns the property now is responsible to you for the return of the security deposit.

Even if they did not get the deposit from the previous owners, or credit for it during the sale of the building, they assumed responsibility for it when they bought the building.

The fact that you are on a month-to-month tenancy instead of a lease has no bearing on the deposit. But because the information about the deposit is detailed in your original lease agreement, and because the couple who bought the building may not have a copy of that lease, be sure to hang on to your copy of it to verify the deposit’s amount and terms.

Landlord must re-rent ASAP

Question: We live in Irvine. In response to a recent reader question, you said that a tenant breaking a lease is only responsible for the unpaid rent until the unit is re-rented or the lease expires, if the landlord tries to re-rent the apartment for the same rent that the tenant was paying.

If we break our lease and the landlord tries to re-rent the apartment at a higher rate than we pay, we are not responsible for any unpaid rent as a result of our breaking the lease? Is that right?

Answer: According to Trevor Grimm, general counsel to the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, a property owners’ service group, “You could raise as a defense the fact that by seeking a higher rent the landlord is limiting the universe of potential replacement renters and thereby is violating his duty to attempt to mitigate the damages flowing from your breach of the lease.

“It is his duty to try to re-rent the unit as soon as reasonably possible, and higher rents translate into fewer potential renters, meaning the landlord could be found not to be doing everything possible to mitigate your damages.�

Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles. E-mail questions about apartment living to [email protected], c/o Kevin Postema, or mail to AAGLA, c/o Kevin Postema, 621 S. Westmoreland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005.