How does reletting (lease assignment) usually look like for the person who is taking over a residential lease? Should there be a reletting addendum? Should the contract include the lease agreement of the original tenant? Should it contain a list of the obligations that are transferred to the new tenant?
I am asking this question to understand whether my landlord can make me liable for the property damages caused by the original tenant. As the substituting tenant, I have signed a boilerplate rental agreement that says I am liable only for the damages caused after I moved in. It does not even say that I am taking over anybody's lease. However, there is an AS-IS provision in the following addendum: https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Pgdo.jpg that scares me. The lease contains no definition of how this provision affects the lease, though. The contract also describes the reletting procedure, saying that the original tenant is responsible for all his damages, but as far as I know he has not been billed for anything.
I feel like the management just did not bother to inspect the properties or prepare proper paperwork to transfer the obligations, but wanted somebody to be responsible for remodeling in the end. At the same time hey charged the original tenant a hefty fee of $450 to cover their "expenses".
