United States
Generally in the United States, apartment leases are not transferable without the consent of the landlord. The primary exception is the right to rent a space in a mobile home park, which is frequently transferable, frequently rent-controlled, and frequently subject to French-style "key money" payments to the original tenant in the form of buying the current mobile home at an inflated price. The new tenant can then junk the existing, outdated trailer and replace it with a modern one while keeping the terms of the original lease for the land under it.
In the United States, it is illegal for landlords to require off-the-books key money. The terms of the written lease can be enforced in court. However, a cash bribe, styled as "key money," may be demanded in cities with strict rent controls. Because it is paid in cash, it can be very difficult to prove in court.
When renting commercial properties in which the premises already contains various trade-fixtures, equipment, electric, and plumbing (items typically left when a former tenant vacates), such items have a value above the typical rent for an empty "vanilla shell" premises. The landlord would charge the tenant key money in order for the tenant to have the right to use and take over all of the existing equipment.
It is also common to require key money in the form of a security deposit. It is common for a landlord to require the equivalent of one or two months rent as a security deposit to offset delinquent rent payments or damage to the property during occupancy. This deposit is held in escrow and is refunded when the tenant moves out, less any repair costs or unpaid rent. It is illegal but common for unscrupulous landlords to refuse to refund some or all of this deposit, instead keeping it for unneeded "cleaning" or "repairs."
Landlord-tenant laws in the United States typically specify that a landlord must provide a detailed accounting of all deductions from a security deposit on request and normally cannot charge for "normal wear and tear," such as replacing old carpets or painting walls that have not been painted for many years.
Read more about this topic: Key Money
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The popular colleges of the United States are turning out more educated people with less originality and fewer geniuses than any other country.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)
“It is a curious thing to be a woman in the Caribbean after you have been a woman in these United States.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)