If just signing that means I would have gotten scammed.... he woulda scammed me because I stopped reading it after the 10$ part.

I think the people that are saying the $10 is just to transfer from one company to the other, with OP getting the security deposit in the end, are absolutely wrong. OP (Assignor) presently has an interest in his security deposit (his $2200). They are asking to buy that interest for $10. They are asking to buy HIS interest. There's no way that op has to sign anything like this for there to be a transfer of ownership.

You guys might want it to read as benign, but it does not read that way to me. IMO, they are trying to scam you hardcore.

that contract is predatory for sure as far as I can tell.

It looks like they want to assign your 2200$ to the other party and give you 10$ in return

My point was that it could mean they have to buy his interest in the security deposit before they're legally allowed to sell it to another party. In that instance I'm not sure what the $10 would be there for, other than some ridiculously lol sense of good faith.

A ton of fail in here. Mortgages get transferred for $1 all the time. The original value maintains. The OP security deposit just gets transfered to the new property owner, in trust, for the OP. Go see a lawyer, and offer him the $10 as a fee to read the letter.

IANAL, you should talk to one though.

Sounds like the security deposit is somehow tied to the title and they need the title to be "clear" before it can be legally transferred.

Maybe they're just trying to get you to transfer the security deposit to them but you keep your right to get the deposit back if there's no damage to your apartment at the end of the lease? (ie. it's not the 2200 that's being transferred itself, they just put the number in there to describe the security deposit) If so the wording could def be better. And not cool of the realtor to shove this on you without explaining what it means.

Why can the old owner not pay you out, and you sign a new deposit contract with the new owner? This would be the safest option from your pov.

I guess a lot more people would get scammed than I thought...

Ok? When one bank transfers a mortgage to another bank, the bank is selling its interest in that mortgage to the other bank. As you can plainly see, the contract is asking op to sell his interest in his security deposit to somebody else. The original value may remain, but the way this contract reads, it will not remain with op.

Where does it say that here?

Why would op do that? So he can potentially make an amazing profit of $10?

The realtor has made a mistake. The assignor should be the old landlord to the new one who is entitled to the old landlord's interest in the security deposit, not yours. The $10 is legalese to establish 'consideration' and is never actually paid.

Call the realtor and tell him that you're not signing it and why.

there are a bunch of law students and lawyers on 2p2, i'm sure you could PM one of them and they'd look at it for free. there's a law school thread in SL for starters.

What Howard Beale said

lol please post this in the law school thread

this thread would be a lot more interesting if you just asked the realtor that e-mailed it to you to explain what it meant and then included that info before just immediately yelling SCAM SCAM SCAM, so i have no idea why you wouldn't have just asked first and saved the reply in case he said it was one thing then turned out to be another.

i still haven't seen one definite plain-language translation here, just a lot of "it probably means"s, so i'd say it's open to interpretation without the writer's context or a definite understanding of the legalese terms - and your only proof of a scam is that something scam-like could occur with one of the many possible unofficial interpretations. if you had asked and the realtor said "oh that's just a form saying you won a free bag of candy hearts from the new owners", then yes, you'd have a scam on your hands because it is clearly not that.

The document is a simple assignment and can be easily understood. By signing OP is giving his rights to the security deposit to the new owners, something that they are not entitled to. I'm guessing that in FL closings are handled by realtors/title companies and not by lawyers as is the case in AZ where I live. The realtor should realize his mistake as soon as it's pointed out to him and if not he should be told to ask the broker in charge of his office.

no. if i were dictator the lawyers would be so ****ed because you would not be allowed to make **** like this where you need a degree in legal arcana to correctly interpret a document given to lay people, and usually poor dumb lay people, to sign. my english is basically as good as it gets (800 SAT verbal), and i have to really focus to understand that document, and i come to the same conclusion as the op: here's $10--now you give us $2.2k. how is OP supposed to know about $10 consideration tokens being standard?

my iron-fist judges under the glaaazed haaam dictatorship would take a document like that and tell the drafters to go **** themselves and write it up again in plain english so a 10-year-old could understand it or its not going to be binding.

Can people really not read this and understand it? It does say that the tenant's stake in the deposit will be transferred to Hugo & Ana (new owners) in exchange for $10.

Some overworked junior laywer made a mistake. It happens. Just point it out and have them fix it. Essentially "Tenant, Daniel XXX" needs to be swapped with "Howard YYY and Allan ZZZ". No biggie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

spoken like a true lawyer.

i'm glad i'm not the only one that didn't understand wtf was going on in that letter. would have felt real stupid if no one mentioned what a cluster**** it is.

Gosh this is so ******ed. Nominal consideration is not consideration at all since it is not the true motivation for mutual assent yo. Yet one hundred years after courts have established this moronic lawyers still try and tell their clients they need some nominal consideration to "make it legal".

The security deposit is payable to me, not the current landlord. People saying it's an oversight and that they should have swapped the current landlord's name with my own are being naive.

The new landlord would like me to sign this so that the security deposit will be payable to him. SPOILER ALERT: He's not going to return it to me.

My best attempt to convert this to plain English:

Still more fail, except for Howard Beale. Its badly written, yes. Not just the poor choice of legalspeak, but they mixed up the parties. So you tell them, they fix it, and everyone moves on.

The scam would be for the tenant to just get his deposit back, and then choose to not pay for any damages after he moves out to the new owner.


Seller has interest in the security deposit, buyer has purchased that interest. Seller has an obligation to the tenant in the amount of the security deposit, buyer now assumes that obligation. It follows that the actual deposit should transfer. Even though its currently held by the condo board.

Google "assignment of security deposit".

The first link shows what this crappy agreement should be, an agreement between the current owner of the property and the new buyer, acknowledging that there are outstanding security deposits from tenants.

The interest in the security deposits gets transferred along with the property itself, and this is a separate agreement acknowleding that, and setting out the terms.

So, in my opinion, in order of most to least likely scenarios, here is what happened:

(1) Realtor or a clerk in his/her office is an unsophisticated/inexperienced dumdum who simply put in the wrong party as the assignor

(2) For whatever reason, realtor thinks this is proper procedure, intends for you to keep your right to recover your security deposit, but is going about it the wrong way

(3) This is a scam to get your monies. The only credence I give this idea is the fact that the first sentences acknowledges that the "Tenant" is the assignor. Hopefully they just meant "Seller", because this is a dumb scam.

Winner. Everyone calm down. They just have the wrong person executing the Assignment. Tell them the Landlord needs to sign that, not you. They are not scammers, just idiots. End of story. And IAAL.