LEASE Contract

Situation:
Agreement without contract is to initially pay for 2 months deposit and 3 months advance.
Three months has passed and contract is not yet given by the lessor. Then the lessor suddenly asked through SMS for another payment of 3 months advance without prior notice. Lessor claims that it was mentioned on first day of leasing and it was agreed upon. However, truth is, it was not mentioned. Leaser then pass the contract through the door while lessee is out and still obliged to pay for 3 months advance. Reviewing the contract it was not stated that the lesser are to pay 3 months advance for every payment and that the 3 months advance is refundable. Also, the contract to date is only signed by the lessor. Moreover, the receipt does not contain receipt # or tin #. Lessee is hesitant to pay the 3 months advance but would want to solve the case since the monthly rate and location of the unit is reasonable and convenient. How can this be solved in a fair and justified manner? Thank you very much.

keep negotiating with the landlord. write a letter back stating your position.

hi. good day po.
I am into lease agreement that commenced last Sept 2010 and it is a 1yr term. 1 month deposit and 1 month advance. 15K monthly rent.
what happened was, the rented place is a 2 story house with an enclosed porch and inside the porch is a restobar. the reason we took the place is to have a restobar business and boarding house. the restobar equipment were sold to us by previous tenant.

since we cant get income from the boarding house coz we were not able to attract bedspacers, we had problem producing the 15k rent but we still managed to be updated. Came november, we talked to the lessor and asked him if we could give him back the boarding house section of the house and we will just take the restobar section so that we will be paying a lower rental. the owner agreed and gave us just the restobar section for a rate of 8K a month and 1 extra room on the 2nd floor for my wife and baby to stay.
this change was not written down coz owner said he will provide the document but nothing made and we just took his word. then after several days additional change was added. this time is to put a divider crosswise to the restobar area for the purpose of isolating the boarding house. there was only 1 entrance for the bhouse and the restobar, maybe having one entrance was a turn off for inquirers, and this obliged us to create our own entrance on the other end of the hollowblock wall. It was understood that the room provided on the 2nd floor was included in the 8k rate, but this second meeting, they want us to pay for that room. we were surprised ofcourse and questiond the owner, so he provided us a small room which is part of the main house but has an access from the bar. although our space gone down for the 2nd time, the rent stayed at 8k. and again, this is not written.

now, since the expiration of the contract is approaching, we informed the owner of our tentative plan not to renew. we also asked him about the deposit and advance. the advance was supposedly used for the 1st month of the term but was not. He collected right away after 15 days for half of the original rate. So I gave him 7500 on Sept 15. Before letting go of the money i insisted that he should not collect yet not until the end of sept.he said that the advance will be applied for the last month. I gave him consideration, maybe he needed the money a lot.
Going back on our plan to not renew, we asked him what will happen to the deposit and advance. he said since the contract was breached because we requested a smaller place for a smaller rent, deposit is forfeited. the advance, he chose to give it(15K) back to us before we vacate the place.

did we really breach the contract? does he has right to forfeit the deposit? did he also breach the contract by not letting us use the advance on the 1st month, its is not stated in the contract that the advance will be for the last month.

to my mind, there was no breach because there was an agreement to modify the contract. the hard part is how to prove.