Tips For Breaking An Apartment Lease

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Life changes. You may get a new job, lose a job, or have other circumstances that result in breaking an apartment lease. The problem is that breaking a lease isn’t always simple. In fact, there can be penalties that aren’t anything to joke about. Let’s look at some tips for breaking an apartment lease.

Tips For Breaking An Apartment Lease:

Know the Penalties

There can be severe penalties when you are breaking an apartment lease. Your landlord may choose to open a civil lawsuit against you. You may be hit with a credit judgement on the amount owed on the lease. Both of these issues can make it harder to lease another place in the future. You obviously want to avoid these penalties.

Read the Contract

You want to carefully read over your contract to see if it contains an early termination clause. This clause may release you from the lease if you have financial hardships or certain life events that lead to the early termination. This might include job loss, divorce, medical issues or a job transfer.

Plead Your Case

If your landlord is an understanding person, plead your case to him. Explain the reason for needing to break the lease. This is a time to be brutally honest. Tell him why you’re moving and what it means for you and your family. It might be a new baby on the way and the need for a larger apartment or a job offer that you’ve worked hard for.

Give Up Your Security Deposit

Your security deposit is often a nice chunk of change. Your landlord has to consider the loss of income when you break your lease. Offering your security deposit can help lessen the blow. You can also offer to paint and clean the apartment so that it’s ready to go as soon as you turn over the keys, which will reduce his out of pocket expenses.

Understand the Breach of Contract

If all else fails, and your landlord is refusing to work with you, consider the breach of contract. If there are things that your landlord has refused to fix, you can use this as a reason to legally break the lease. You will need to prove that you contacted the landlord and gave him the opportunity to fix the problem. Keep records of all correspondence.

It’s never ideal to break a lease, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Do everything you can to make the process easy on everyone. When you work with the landlord, and take his needs into consideration, you’ll both be able to walk away happy.