When signing a new lease for an apartment or home, most people plan to stay there for the duration of their agreement with their landlord. But sometimes, life happens.
Leaving before your lease expires is known as “breaking a lease,” and it’s something that happens for all types of reasons — like buying your own home, having to move away for a new job opportunity, or finding yourself in a difficult financial situation. But breaking a lease can be complicated, and can leave you on the hook for a lot of money.
But what happens if you don’t have a choice, and you find yourself in the situation of needing to get out of your lease early? Here is what you need to know:
Chief among them is how long your lease is actually for — it may be a year, or longer, or it may be month-to-month. If your lease term is coming to an end, or if you are on a month-to-month lease, you may be able to avoid breaking the lease. Your lease will also tell you how much notice you have to give your landlord if you are deciding not to renew your lease, which is typically 30 or 60 days.
Your lease also may also have an early termination clause, which outlines how much you have to pay if you move out before the lease term ends. Those penalties can vary. Some agreements might say that you will forfeit your security deposit and pay a few months’ rent for breaking the lease. Or, your landlord can also try to hold you responsible for rent through the end of the lease term.
“As a tenant, you have to weigh the pros and cons of breaking the lease,” Garland says. “The pro is that if you really need to move, you break the lease and you move. The con is that there could be financial consequences.”
If your landlord can’t rent your apartment after you leave, you may be on the hook for rent for the rest of your lease. But if they do find another tenant, they can’t charge you rent for the place too.
But does your landlord have to look for another tenant? In many states, residential landlords are required to make reasonable efforts to re-rent their properties in the case that a tenant breaks a lease, as opposed to charging you for the amount of rent remaining during the lease term. This is called a “duty to mitigate damages.”
Pennsylvania’s laws regarding the mitigation of damages are less clear, but Garland says that residential landlords in the commonwealth have “an obligation to try to re-rent the unit” if a tenant breaks a lease, and cannot “ride out the lease term and say, ‘You owe me all this money.’”
But you could still end up having to pay if your landlord can’t find a new tenant. “The landlord can say that they legitimately tried to do all that and have not been able to re-rent the unit,” Garland says. “Then, they can charge that money to the tenant.”
But there are other exceptions, too. If you’re an active military service member, federal law allows you to terminate your lease early if necessary.
Philadelphia also has some protections, if you’re a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault and you need to end your lease early to stay safe. According to the Fair Housing Commission’s website, if you’re in that situation, you “can terminate [your] lease at any time without penalty.” For help, Garland recommends contacting the Philly Tenant Hotline at 267-443-2500.
But there are few other reasons that you can get out of a lease without penalty in Pennsylvania. So if you buy a house, move in with a partner, or have to relocate for work or school, you probably don’t have legal protection that will let you out of your lease.
One important note: there are, currently, no protections in place that allow tenants to break their lease due to the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic (though some rental assistance programs are available).
“There aren’t really any protections that will help support tenants who need to get out of their leases for financial reasons right now,” Garland says. “So, it becomes a risk.”
OK, but what happens if you have to break your lease anyway? Garland says that the best route is to keep lines of communication open with your landlord.
“It never hurts for them to reach out to their landlord and explain the circumstances,” Garlands says. “Some landlords understand, and would rather exit a possibly disastrous financial situation sooner rather than later.”
Keep records of all official communication, such as by sending letters via certified mail. That way, you may be able to negotiate a documented agreement, like being let out of your lease for an agreed-upon price, by finding someone to sublet your unit, or even — in a best-case scenario — without penalty.
Some landlords, she adds, may be more willing to let a tenant out of a lease now, during summer, because it’s generally easier to find a new tenant in summer than it is in winter.
You can also help by collecting a list of people who are interested in renting the property and giving it to your landlord. Whatever you do, though, it is important to be cooperative and give the process plenty of time.
“The more notice the tenant can give the landlord, and the more the tenant can cooperative with the landlord in terms of re-renting the unit, the better it will be for the tenant,” Garland says. “It’s always better to try and come to some type of agreement in advance.”
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July 24, 2020 at 07:05PM
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Can I break my lease? Your tenants’ rights, explained - The Philadelphia Inquirer
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