Another day, another draft

This is the boring lease update post & there are no photos. If you want to skip the relocation process drama and wait for a more fun post, please feel free Dear Reader.

I received another draft of the infamous lease today. The good news is that it’s a good draft and that it addresses the issues I raised. (For the record, most of those issues were due to an imperfect import of new lease terms that conflicted with existing lease terms, making the last draft at odds with itself.)

The bad news is that it is a DRAFT… It is not complete (landlord’s pedigree information is still missing, as are certain details left as blanks — like the square footage) and, alas, it is still unsigned. If they’d fill in the blanks, I’d sign it — provided we can solve one wrinkle which (coincidentally) is caused by the delay in getting a executed lease.

So here is the wrinkle: getting the deposit. You see, B’lore landlords typically get 10-12 months rent as a deposit. Yeah, that’s about the price of a nice new car in the US (i.e., entry-level luxury car). “No one” waives or shortens this requirement to less than 10 months. Companies know this, so to facilitate relocating people, most companies front the deposit (and hold their employees personally liable to repay it, regardless of whether the landlord reimburses the employee/tenant).

However, my company has a process for everything and I am told that the deposit process takes at least 5 business days from when the company approves the fully executed lease. No one has been able to explain what it takes to get the executed lease approved (I suspect it’s just double checking that the lease has been duly signed, but I don’t really know). And, of course, the company will pay the deposit funds into my US bank account (w/in that magical 5 days), but then I have to wire the money to the landlord in India, which will take a least another business day.

Thus, by my calculation, I need AT LEAST 6 business days and a lot of luck from when I have a fully executed lease to get the landlord his deposit.

I’ve been concerned about this timing for weeks. I’ve spelled out this timing requirement to the realtor, who tells me she explained it clearly to the landlord and his realtor. I starting losing sleep mid April, when we didn’t have an executed lease in advance of the original May 1 lease commencement date. (The landlord originally insisted on 1st start day rather than my Company’s preferred mid-month start date, but he later changed his mind.) I made it clear then (and ever since) that the landlord won’t get his deposit until I get it from the Company and that I need sufficient runway to make that happen. The realtor assured me this would be no problem –especially now that we now had 2 weeks “extra” time to work it all out. I cautioned against waiting until the last minute….and yet here we are: 6 business days before the lease starts and no executed lease yet!

Oh, did I mention that the Company HR/relocation support person for my assignment –who would normally “process” this deposit — has mysteriously gone missing? Well, to be fair, I started getting bounce-back email notices that he was out of the office until next month and that I should contact his manager with any questions. But seriously, after months of working together, the week before I am scheduled to depart, he just falls of the face of the earth? I do hope everything is okay, because it seems so odd that I didn’t get any advance notice. But I am also concerned about changing horses mid-stream (not that I have any options).

Wish me luck!

Update: 8th May 2013. I just learned that my former Company HR/relocation support person has changed roles within the company. Good to know that his sudden disappearance wasn’t anything more dramatic. I did get an apology for the abrupt change in support, but I’m told his new position is “urgent”.  (Um,  thanks for the apologies.  Admittedly, my view of what’s “urgent” is pretty self-centered right now, as I have about four days before I’m on a plane…)