I have a conundrum that's really been eating at me these last two weeks -
We are set to close on a house on July 23. We went under contract on this house at the beginning of this month, which is a really protracted time in this market. I would have liked to have an earlier closing date, but we'll be away out of state for nearly 3 weeks and there was no realistic opportunity for my wife and I to be here earlier in the month to get the keys. I don't see anything that's going to delay our closing and the house is currently unoccupied - the seller is selling his mom's place through POA, so there's nothing that the sellers need to do between now and closing (power's on, and yard care has been taken care of).
Our lease is also on a bimonthly renewal, and our new place is less than 5 minutes' drive from our current place.
This is a pretty standard scenario, except...
The property management group our landlord uses stipulates that we give 60 days' notice. I called and asked nicely and they said they do not make exceptions unless an exception was written that way in the initial lease. Okay, fine. My follow-up question was whether they would list and start showing the place immediately after our giving notice, to which they also said 'absolutely'.
So this puts us in a place I really don't want to be. The way I see it we have two options:
1) Give notice this week, giving us roughly 5 weeks to do any work & move into the new place. Allows us to avoid paying too much extra rent. Here's the rub - we're going to be gone for close to 3 weeks and our vacation is not considered an event for which they would delay showings. I was also told (verbally, I want this in writing too) that if we do give notice, we will be required to keep the house at a comfortable temperature (she seemed to indicate 74-75ish, we have a dumb thermostat), as well as keep power to the appliances & rooms. I did get her to agree that we will be allowed to have the water off. We are also being asked to do a semi-deep clean of the place to have it in presentable condition before we go.
The other wrinkle to this is that, if something happened with the house, the only way we could re-secure our current place is if another person hasn't signed a lease. Once a new tenant is lined up, our safety net is gone if the purchase on the new place goes sideways.
2) Wait until we have the keys in hand before giving notice. This would give us more time to move/clean/update but we'd be on the hook for an extra $1500 in rent in addition to paying for the utilities on both places in the hottest month of the year.
I was this close today to sending over the notice, but I just can't shake the fact that we'd have strangers in the house and no way to see if people have taken anything, will have to pay to keep the house air conditioned and the lights on (normally, I turn off the breakers to rooms, and we keep the AC closer to 80), and we'd almost certainly lose this place as a safety net.
But on the other hand, I'd hate to have to pay for an extra months' rent that we don't need, as well as the utilities that we won't need. Perhaps I can talk to them again, but the way she made it seem, if we were to notify them we'd vacated the house a month early they'd hold us in violation of our lease (our lease, as it's written, says that we owe an additional months' rent if we 'abandon' the property before our set move-out date).
So a long-winded build up to - should we give notice this week and just eat the utility bills/not worry about our new home purchase going sideways, or should we play it 'safe' and just eat the extra $1700 for another months' rent (leaving us with that much less for work on the new place).