tenant washington
Can someone collect on an oral agreement that included an invalid tenancy
<p>If someone were to offer up their lease in a living space that they were signed to without properly subleasing it through property management, are they legally allowed to collect rent in the state of Washington? The correspondence in doing this was done through text message and had no clear date of repayment outlined.</p>

<p>Edit for further clarity:
There was an agreement for a friend to live in a space that was signed for under someone else’s name for the summer. There was an expectation for the friend to pay the person who held the lease to pay for his time living there. Through none of this was the lease signed over to the friend who was living there. The original tenant was also not present for the entirety of this period.</p>

<p>A text message based agreement is written and not oral for legal purposes, so the statute of frauds wouldn't be an issue (leases of less than a year generally don't have to be in writing to be valid in any case).</p>

<p>The fact that the property was subleased without permission of the landlord would probably not make the sublease invalid between the original tenant and the sublessee, unless the landlord evicted the sublessee as a result (i.e. the sublease would probably be "voidable" rather than "void"). But, this situation would make make an eviction of the sublessee without the landlord also evicting the original tenant difficult.</p>

<p>Even if the subleasee weren't liable to the original tenant under the sublease established by text messages, the subleaseee would still probably be liable to the original tenant under a theory of unjust enrichment.</p>

<p>Also, the subleasee might have liability for any unpaid rent directly to the landlord under the theory that while the subleasee is not in "privity of contract" with the landlord (i.e. the subleasee does not have a lease that runs directly to the landlord), the subleasee is in "privity of estate" with the landlord while occupying the premises (i.e. the subleasee is obligated to the landlord as a result of living in the leased premises). (Washington State still reccognized the doctrine of privity of estate, <a href="http://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-court-of-appeals/1664557.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">as of 2014</a>, although the articulation of the doctrine in the linked case isn't a model of clarity.)</p>
