When there is no lease--or rather, no written lease--a tenancy is month to month. Verbal or oral agreements only create month-to-month tenancies. That means the landlord is only entitled to:1) Rent for any time they were actually in (so about 1 month)2) Rent for the next month, if they gave less than 30 days notice (for a month to month tenancy, a tenant needs to provide 30 days notice)3) If there was a security deposit, the landlord may take out of it money for any damages done by tenants--or if there is no security deposit, he may sue for any damage.However, that's it--the "verbal understanding" of a semester term has no effect in this situation; it's just a standard oral or verbal month-to-month tenancy.