New Law Helps Foreclosed Tenants

Thousands of Washington tenants find themselves within a lurch without their own fault when their respective landlords end up losing their rental homes prior to mortgage defaults.

The amount of foreclosures on every kind of house within the state is almost fifty percent higher compared to last year and is still rising due to unemployment and weak markets on housing. One particular national group has an estimate of forty percent on foreclosed homes that are occupied by certain renters.

State and federal lawmakers have enacted brand new protections for tenants this year as a response to the ever-growing amount of foreclosures that involve rental property; however, attorneys are still scrambling with hopes of reconciling differences between this law and a brand new state law.

Advocates of tenants state that their biggest fear would be inconsistencies and contradictions that will make things hard for certain attorneys to actually advise their respective clients. It would also be difficult for renters of foreclosed homes to comprehend their personal rights.

Maybe the hardest question would be whether tenants who don’t sign leases with brand new owners need to keep paying rent, since they very seldom get their actual security deposits returned from previous landlords.

Federal laws require such tenants to keep on paying for rent for their duration of property occupation that could be ninety days from the original sale or the actual remainder of the old lease – depending on which period happens to be longer.
Newer state laws, however, do not require these tenants to pay for rent to new owners. But this law does not require new owners to honor old leases, so tenants have to move out by sixty days after notification.

The biggest landlord association of the state did not oppose this new law at all.
Generally, federal laws tend to trump state laws when it comes to setting minimum protection standards. In certain cases where such oppose each other, however, provisions that afford tenants with more protection needs to apply.

With the amount of state foreclosures, as well as the amount of tenants that live within them, it could get very confusing.
Counselors of tenants state that within the previous half year, they have witnessed a scary increase in renter cases who have signed leases over to their landlords who have already defaulted on mortgages.

Finding new rentals would be especially difficult for poor tenants who receive housing vouchers through federal programs due to tight supplies of that kind of housing. Such federal laws provide these tenants with similar protections. Tenants will at least get more warning compared to before.

This new state law would require trustees that foreclose on properties to offer tenants a minimum of ninety days’ notice before selling, as well as their options. Even though trustees post notices within the property, they will now be required to send mails of notices addressed to residents of the property.

Despite confusing discrepancies of the law, these new federal and state laws provide important relief for renters who worry about getting displaced by foreclosures.

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