We signed a one year lease with the owner of the home and gave him a check for $2,500.00 for the deposit. He in turn gave us the keys and the garage door openers. Exactly 6 days before our move date he told us that he had to sale the home because of a financial bind. He tried to find us another home and in turn we had to go with another property management company, pay 1,000 more for a deposit and purchase a refrigerator and washer/dryer (the other house had those appliances already in the home). Do we have a case to take him to court atleast for the extra money we had to pay out?
Answer
To start, the sale of the home doesn't terminate the landlord's obligation (nor the tenant's) under a lease. A foreclosure could, but not a sale. What your landlord would be selling would be a tenant-occupied income property, not a vacant house, but you'd have had a right to remain as the tenant (unless the lease contained a specific termination-upon-sale clause, which is rather unusual in residential leases). Consider, for example, the situation where a large office building such as the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building gets a new owner. Do you imagine the chaos if all the hundreds of tenants got evicted as a result of the sale? It's the same with single-tenant residences, apartment buildings, stores, and everything.
You probably have a case for return of your deposit and some amount of money damages for breach of the lease. I'm somewhat doubtful about whether you would be awarded the outlays for additional deposit and/or the appliances as specific losses you have incurred, because the deposit is refundable and the appliances expenditures aren't so much a loss to you as a transfer of one kind of asset into another, but it's worth a try. Small claims may be a good venue.
A possible drawback is that if the (former) landlord is or was in a financial bind, he may not be able to pay any judgment you get against him.
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