Landlord making lease assignment difficult
Hi everyone!
I’m in a bit of a weird situation and I’m not sure what to do.
My 3 person household informed my landlord in April that we needed to end the lease early as jobs have changed/people graduated and it’s no longer viable to be in the university area we live in. 2 of us have been living here for 5 years and he has drafted a new lease every year (preventing month to month). This is stupid on our parts, but 3rd roommates have come and gone and my landlord was ‘unfamiliar’ with adding a tenant.
I requested for him to sign an N11 to end the lease early and he sent back an AI written email saying we can either assign or stay on the lease. When I spoke to him in person about this, he did not seem to know what assigning a lease actually meant (did not know he cannot jack up the rent for the assigned tenants).
I have been advertising the apartment for lease takeover and had several viewings. I sent him a woman that was very interested in the apartment but he said he only wants student tenants and wants multiple applicants to choose from. From my understanding, he cannot arbitrarily deny an assignment and I can submit an N9 to terminate the lease if he does not respond to an application within 7 days but he never actually got to the point of receiving an application from the potential tenant. He never denied or accepted her, just said he wants multiple applicants-specifically students. He also wants the assignee to front first/last as a deposit-I have no idea what the common practice is for this but it seems a bit unreasonable for a 5/6 month lease.
My landlord doesn’t speak the best English so communication has been difficult. Some of his responses are clearly AI so I’m not sure what he actually knows about the assignment process etc.. He has also neglected to fix several things in the apartment over the years (we had no lights in the living room, a few in the kitchen/bathroom went out, there is paint peeling from the bathroom from a vent issue). He is fixing them now that we have been essentially harassing him about it but is trying to charge us/the condominium management for it. The rent is also higher than market value although he insists it is not and he tried to suddenly increase the rent by $450/month during one of our lease changes (third roommate informed him he was moving out and therefore broke the lease). He has also been illegally charging us for pet fee/key deposit (we were young and naive when we first signed and it has not been worth the uphill battle since).
Any help would be appreciated! I would love to send an N9 and move out to my new place without worrying about any of this, but I’m unsure if I actually have the grounds to do so.
tldr: landlord wants multiple applicants for lease assignment, hasn’t actually denied any applicants