Thread: breaking rental agreement. advice needed

my fiance was recently hired with an apartment complex that requires her to live on site, with a free apartment. so we are breaking our rental agreement on our house to move over there. the landlords agreed but we are to keep paying rent till its rented, also they are going to bring in a leasing agency to try to get it leased out. they are raising the rent considerably though to the next tenant, which i dont even believe the house is worth near as much as they want now, considering things that they have neglected to fix. just trying to see if im getting screwed, if theres other ways around this?

Don't think you're getting screwed, just being taken advantage of. That should be expected though since you are breaking the agreement.

Most leases incorporate some sort of agreement in the event of a tenant breaching. The most common I see is the forfeiture of one month's rent and the security deposit (or 2 month's rent). I would review your lease.

By law, I believe they must attempt to mitigate their loss by renting it out to someone else; I do not believe they are allowed to charge substantially more (if at all). Check with a real estate attorney.

ya i thought i had heard something about them not being able to raise the rent up like that. trying to find the laws on google isnt exactly an easy task, and i dont really want to fork out the money for an attorney.

BTW welcome to L4P!

Originally Posted by RiseAbove

ya i thought i had heard something about them not being able to raise the rent up like that. trying to find the laws on google isnt exactly an easy task, and i dont really want to fork out the money for an attorney.

BTW welcome to L4P!

Thanks, I've been stalking here a while. Is the property located in CA? I can try to pull up the relevant laws tomorrow; I have free access to Westlaw and LexisNexis.

yes it is, that would be awesome. thank you!

PM me an e-mail address; the statute (with committee notes) is quite long. In short, the lessor has to act reasonably in attempting to mitigate their loss by reletting the property.

Btw, it's Annotated California Civil Code § 1951.2 Termination of lease; remedy of lessor.

"The duty to mitigate the damages will often require that the property be relet at a rent that is more or less than the rent provided in the original lease. The test in each case is whether the lessor acted reasonably and in good faith in reletting the property." The legal standard is reasonableness.

so, if they are actively speaking to leasing agencies and showing them the house to put it on the market for rent, no matter them raising the rent, that would show they are "reasonably attempting to mitigate their loss"? just wanna make sure im reading this right.

Yes, and no. Reasonableness is a fluid concept. If your rent was $1,000/month and that is the going rate, if now they're trying to charge $3,000/month, that is clearly unreasonable.

Reasonableness will also depend on location; price in that location, number of vacancies, etc. If every other property is currently vacant, it is unreasonable for them to try to charge more.

From my past experience - get it all in writing, have them tell you who is going to be the leasing agency. If you feel they wont tell you this you could say you have a few people who would be interested in the place so they need to know who to contact. In Chicago they could keep charging me until the place was filled so I put out craigslist ads and did an open house of my own. But it looks like here in Cali is a bit less painful.

Good Luck
~K