Legal Advice Rental Contract: Termination and Your Rights

Questioner

best, I have been renting an upper floor privately since the beginning of this year. I informed the landlord on 20 Nov. that I would like to cancel the lease. He writes to me that this is only possible as of 1 July 2013 and refers to the contract: 'The agreement is entered into for a period of 6 months and then for a new period of 6 months if no notice of termination has been given by either party, etc. etc. Notice of termination must be given with due observance of a notice period of 2 months.' The landlord has told me that I can terminate the lease in the meantime and contractually this seems to me to be the case (as I read/understand it). Furthermore, this contract (landlord has an insurance/mortgage company) can therefore be declared invalid, given the fact that the contract is legally incorrect and misleading? Please advice. Regards.

Lawyer

If all goes well, you pay the rent monthly and not bimonthly and therefore your notice period is legally one month. So a registered notice with that term that reaches the landlord before December 1st, will result in the lease ending on January 1st. Incidentally, one may rent for a minimum period, but that is no longer relevant in this case.

Lawyer

The rental agreement itself is valid, but if it contains provisions that conflict with the law, those provisions do not apply. As to the question of whether interim termination is possible: if I read the text of the agreement, as you have shown, I infer from this that interim termination is not possible. However, if the landlord indicates that this would be possible, then the statutory notice period must be used, which is one month if you pay per month - as Mrs Doomernik also indicates.