Hello,
Last week my girlfriend and I were shown a rental property by a Boston area rental agency. During our visit, the landlord of the property was present and gave us a personal tour of the apartment. We immediately fell in love with the place and two days later, met with the real estate agent at his office and signed the following documents; a Deposit Receipt Form, an Apartment Rental Policy, and a pair of Rental Applications. Each of these documents were also signed and dated by the real estate agent. Along with the documents, we were also asked to leave a $1600 personal check (for first months rent) which according to the Deposit Receipt Form "secured the apartment at the above stated address". The Apartment Rental Policy also stated that "Applicants who decide not to take the apartment, will forfeit their one month's rent deposit unless denied by the landlord". These papers were signed on 01/09/2009 (Saturday) and the papers along with the deposit were delivered by the agent to the landlord. Four days later, the agent called me up and told me that the landlord had just found another tenant who was willing to pay more money and therefore rejected our application.
My question is this... Do the papers and the deposit truly secure the apartment for us? If so, how is the landlord allowed to hold our application and deposit in his possession while continuing to show the apartment to other potential tenants. The landlord knows that we can not walk away from the deal because doing so would forfeit our $1600 yet he has the ability to hold our money knowing that down the road, if he fails to find a more attractive offer he can always fall back onto our contract. He never cashed our check but the funds were made available to him and his reason for denying us was not due to anything negative on our end.
Do I have any ground to argue these circumstances? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you