What is the Implied Covenant of Quiet Enjoyment?

If you rent out property, or manage property, or you’re the one renting or leasing the property, you need to be familiar with the concept of quiet enjoyment. Regardless of your written agreement, the concept is implied in contracts that have to do with rental property.

Not Just Actual Noise

Although the word quiet is in there, the right to quiet enjoyment goes far beyond just noise. It has to do with a tenant’s right to use and enjoy his property in full, as someone with exclusive rights to possess the property would have.

Absent expected and periodic interruptions—for example, imagine a landlord has to come in to inspect property, or imagine that a parking lot in front of a commercial building has to be closed off for a day—a tenant has the legal right to use his or her property in the way it was intended, uninterrupted.

How Much is Too Much?

Certainly, mere noise can be so loud, constant, and pervasive that it can disrupt a tenant’s right to use or enjoy the property. But the line between sporadic or isolated noise incidents, and when the noise becomes so constant so as to breach the covenant of quiet enjoyment, is often one that a court has to decide.

The same goes with intrusions. An occasional inspection by the landlord is reasonable and expected. But if 4 days a week there is the landlord, the handyman, a surveyor, and a property manager, constantly walking into and on the rented property, the intrusion may get to be so constant that it warrants a breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment.

What Happens Next?

In some cases, the intrusion on enjoying the property may become so bad that the tenant may have an action for constructive eviction—that is, even though the tenant is still in and occupying the property physically, the tenant is so unable to use the property because of the nuisance that it’s like the tenant has been evicted.

A tenant who feels that his or her use of the property has become affected need not physically vacate the property (although tenants should avoid withholding rent). A tenant can remain in the property, and at the same time, maintain a lawsuit for breach of quiet enjoyment.

The Landlord’s Control

Things that the landlord cannot control do not qualify as quiet enjoyment violations.

So, for example, if the city was doing very loud construction, or if the city had to work with undergrounds pipes in front of your leased office space, thus blocking off access to the property, that would not be something the landlord could be held liable for, under the concept of quiet enjoyment (although your lease may have other provisions to help you in these cases, as might business interruption insurance).

Call the West Palm Beach commercial litigation lawyers at Pike & Lustig today if you have a business legal problem with rented or commercial property, or with a lease that you signed or need to enforce.

Sources:

giffordpropertymanagement.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyment