The Background Story...
On February XX, Virginia Tech held a housing fair. Since my wife and I were looking for a townhouse on the south end of Blacksburg (I’m a grad student; she works in Christiansburg), I attended. I talked to a few different rental companies, but one really stood out. Old Virginia Rentals had an extremely affordable townhouse with all the right features at exactly the right location.
Within a few days, we had signed a lease with Old Virginia. There was one small complication: the current tenants’ lease ended August 6th, but we wanted to move in sooner than that if possible. Gerry Zirk, our contact at Old Virginia, told me that the tenants wanted to vacate early, so this looked like a win-win situation for everyone.
Gerry assured me then that he’d get their lease change in writing. He wrote our lease with what’s known as a “contingency clause”; that is, our lease was contingent on the other lease being successfully terminated. It looked like we had our ducks in a row; the old tenants were to move out on July 15th and we could take possession on July 20th, giving Gerry’s cleaning and maintenance crew ample time to fix up any rough edges.
That’s not what happened...
Gerry broke promises, Gerry didn’t fix maintenance issues, and Gerry hasn’t paid for what he said he’d pay for.