Moving [Eventually]

They do say that moving house is up there with divorce and the death of a loved one in the stress stakes. And they're not wrong. We've moved twice in Madrid, and now we're onto our third one. Or maybe not. I'd mentioned to my mate the property rental guy that we would be looking to move to a bigger place - at the very least we wanted 2 bedrooms so we could have guests. This was back in September, I think, and almost immediately he came up with an attractive place, not very far from where we are now. Lots of space, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and more or less the same rent we're paying now. We paid one month's rent as a holding deposit, and gave our current landlady one month's notice. She refused to accept the notice, brandishing our original contract which she interprets as meaning 'you can only leave at the end of each complete year'. I personally think this is wrong, but don't have the money, time or inclination to hire a lawyer.

So we were obliged to stay put until the end on March, when the second year was up (had we been able to find anyone to take over the lease, that would have been fine, but winter is less than great in the rental market). Towards the end of March, I spoke to my buddy about moving, and he went kinda pale - he said there were short-term tenants in the new place until the end of June, but was sure there wouldn't be a problem for us to extend our current lease until then. Well, of course there wouldn't, except we really, really don't want to. We are desperate for that extra space. Long story short, he tried to move the tenants of the new place somewhere else, and it didn't work.

So, end of March approaching, we need to move, and we need our 'holding' deposit back.