5. What happens when my lease runs out?

Read your lease carefully. It may say what you must do. For example, the lease may have an "automatic-renewal" clause. This means that, before the lease runs out, you must tell the owner if you plan to move. And the owner must ask you to move before the lease ends. Otherwise, the lease will be renewed for the same period of time as the original agreement.

Note: Automatic-renewal clauses cannot be enforced unless they are printed in bold type as large as this sentence is.

What if you have a six-month or one-year lease, but no automatic-renewal clause? If you pay rent monthly and the owner accepts your rent after the lease is up, the agreement is automatically renewed -- but only on a month-to-month basis. Some leases do not say that they last for a year or for a certain period of time. Instead, they might say the agreement ends on a particular date. In this case, you can stay on in the apartment past that date on a month-to-month basis if the owner accepts your rent payment.