Last month of rent - pro-rate if vacating early?

[grambo]

Hi,

When a renter is moving out in the middle of the month (and doing the walk through with landlord at that time), are they allowed to pro-rate the rent for that month, or do they have to pay in full if they are not out by the last day of the prior month?

I'm in BC if it makes a difference (but I own property in Calgary, so it would be good to know if the rules are different there too).

[BlackArcher101]

Depends on the lease.

If it's normally until the end of the month, then the renter is obligated to pay for the full month. Deviations from this have to be agreed to by both the landlord and renter.

[photon]

Yeah, if it's a periodic tenancy (monthly sounds like), then that's the period of the tenancy.. one party can't just arbitrarily change the period of the tenancy without the other party's agreement.. because that's basically what that would be, changing from a monthly to a bi-monthly or weekly.

That said, depends on the landlords situation they may be amenable to it, they may want to get in and do some stuff and this gives them extra time, or whatever.

[grambo]

Thanks for the info. It was a year lease that rolled into monthly, so yeah monthly is the term, as I expected. I thought about asking the landlord but don't want to be an ass since they have been good with us and it's not a huge amount of money. They will get in for 14 days either way since we are leaving the 17th, I might think about it this week though.

[photon]

I don't think it'll upset them at all, but you could phrase it along the lines of asking if the next tenant would like to move in earlier. I've had that happen a few times so the moving out tenant got a break and the moving in one paid the partial month.

[Devils'Advocate]

Heck, I couldn't find a mover for May 31st and asked my landlord if I could move out at 7am on June 1st. I was told "Sure thing... so long as you pay June's rent".