3 Ways To Deal With Tenants That Want To Break Their Leases Early

Posted on: 29 October 2015

The lease agreements you use with your tenants is a vital document for protecting yourself and your properties. One thing it should clearly state is the result of a tenant breaking his or her lease before it ends. Leases often state that tenants are responsible for paying rent for the entire lease, even if the person moves out early. Unfortunately, it can be hard to collect all this money from a person, unless you fight the battle in court. Here are three alternative options you could look into if a tenant wants to break his or her lease early.  

Allow it if the tenant finds you a new tenant

You could tell this tenant that you will not hold him or her liable for the remaining rent due for the rest of the lease if he or she finds a new tenant for the apartment. This can be a good option because the tenant might strive to do this for you.

The hard part about this is if the tenant finds a new tenant that does not meet your standards for qualification. For example, if the person that wants to rent this apartment has really bad credit, you might not want to rent to him or her.

Allow the tenant to sublet the unit

A second option you could approve or suggest involves subletting. When a tenant sublets, he or she still remains responsible for the lease payments; however, the tenant is allowed to rent the space to someone else. In this situation, the tenant becomes the landlord to the person that moves in the apartment. The point of this arrangement is that it would still allow you to collect the rent from the tenant for the remaining time of the lease agreement.

Allow it for a fee

Instead of trying to collect all the rent remaining on the lease, you could always tell the tenant that you will let him or her break the lease if he or she pays you a certain amount of money. This could be money equal to a month of rent, or it could be more. While this will not satisfy the total amount owed, it would be better than trying to fight the person in court for the total amount. It would also be helpful to cover some of the time it might take as you locate a new tenant for the apartment.

There are ways to work with tenants that need or want to break their leases. If you are a tenant and need to break your lease, you may want to talk to a property management company (such as Taylor Realty) to find out if there are options for doing this. 

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