How to break a lease

by Jen

Leases are one of the few types of contracts that are pretty one-sided. If you violate their terms, you can be evicted. But if your landlord breaks the terms, you may need a lawyer to help you. Landlords are more likely than tenants to have the money to enforce the lease, so it’s really not a fair system.

That said, if you need to break your lease, you do have a few options.

Do you have a good reason to break your lease?

Your local government will have its own laws regarding what’s a good reason to break a lease. Generally, these are things you should not have to put up with in the United States:

“Uninhabitable” conditions like an infestation of bugs, broken windows, mold, or anything that could cause health problems.
Many states in the US promise tenants something called “quiet enjoyment.” Online, you’ll find a lot of debate about what that means, but I found out firsthand, in California, it does include your manager’s failure to evict neighbors who repeatedly violate noise rules (there are also city ordinances about noise rules, no matter what your manager may think is reasonable).
Your landlord or anyone else entering your apartment without giving you 24 hours’ notice. You can waive this and give him permission to enter, but he can’t waive it and enter on his own, except in cases of emergency (like flooding in your apartment).

Unfortunately, this leaves out a lot of legitimate issues, like discovering your neighbors run a meth lab, or suddenly needing a wheelchair in an apartment that’s not handicapped accessible, or losing your job and being unable to pay your rent. A reasonable landlord should want to work with you in circumstances like these. The police should always be brought in if there’s anything criminal going on.

But not all landlords are reasonable. Call some local tenant attorneys and/or tenant advocate groups to find out your options. In most states, if you absolutely have to break your lease, your landlord has an obligation to re-rent your unit as quickly as possible. If he gets it re-leased in three months, you would be obligated to pay for three months’ rent and possibly his advertising costs for getting it rented – and if he rents it for less than what you were paying, you could be obligated to make up the difference. It’s not a cheap option, but it beats owing eight months’ rent, for example. Always talk to the landlord before just splitting – you may be able to work out a payment plan.

Some landlords will propose that you find a qualified tenant to take over your lease, and they will let you go with little or no penalty. This is fine, but get everything in writing. Even if you’re sure your landlord won’t renege on a verbal deal, he might later forget which exact terms he agreed to. It’s in everyone’s best interest to sign a written agreement spelling out who is responsible for what.

Playing hardball

Let’s say your reason for breaking the lease is legitimate enough, but your landlord refuses to make things simple. Or your landlord is a slumlord who has broken the terms of your lease, but still holds you responsible for your part. The burden is on you to prove his wrongdoings.

DO NOT STOP PAYING RENT. This is very important. Withholding partial or full rent, no matter how good your reason, will get you evicted faster than you can bring trouble down on your landlord. Get a lawyer or tenant’s advocacy group to advise you how to go about this. In some states, you can put your rent into an escrow fund and advise the landlord he’ll get it just as soon as he holds up his side of the lease. But you really need to find out the process from someone who knows.

Once upon a time, I was living in an apartment that wasn’t even being kept up to code. The owner was a huge corporation called Lowe Enterprises, and they employed (or partnered with?) a management company that saw fit to do absolutely nothing about windows that wouldn’t close in the middle of December. This is a health and safety issue, but their saving a few bucks was apparently more important than my health. And of course, getting in touch with Lowe to tell them how their managers were doing was impossible. It took some investigation to even find out who owned the building.

Fortunately, the county of Los Angeles felt differently about broken windows – I got a building inspector to cite them for repairs. They made repairs that also weren’t up to code, and didn’t get permits for the work. Can you believe it? So, feeling a little insulted, the inspector cited them to replace every freakin’ window in the complex – that meant hundreds of windows, which must have cost them many thousands – and have their managers attend a school for owners who are a hair away from being officially declared slumlords and getting their rents sliced in half by the county.

Well, that got their attention. Costing them money is the only way to get the attention of big corporations who don’t fulfill their legal obligations.

Despite all this, Lowe had no intention of letting me break my lease. But there was also a very big problem with noise in the building – constant partying from neighbors who were tipping the manager cash for the privilege of breaking the community rules. I gave the manager many chances to stop the parties, but he was usually at them – go figure! I called the cops several times, and they enforced my rights wonderfully, but the $500+ fines didn’t phase my neighbors.

I read online about whether “quiet enjoyment” applied to “manager not preventing neighbors from keeping me up all but 5 nights a month for six months straight” (no, I’m not exaggerating – I kept a sleep journal). The answer is: in theory, yes, but there aren’t any cases to set precedent, so a judge could rule either way. After my doctor advised me I had to break the lease before the sleep deprivation made my health worse (I was already having heart palpitations), I looked for a lawyer.

I found a great one by calling the best tenant attorneys in town, who told me my case was not of interest to them, but they could recommend a young, competent lawyer who would relish a case that might not end in huge contingency fees. He wrote a very strong letter, demanding damages for pain and suffering, the breaking of the lease and a host of other things. I had written a similar letter and gotten no reply, but once they saw it on a lawyer’s letterhead, oh, then suddenly it mattered. That’s another thing I learned: if you write to your huge corporate landlord, it goes into the round file. But if the words “attorney at law” appear in the letterhead, it goes to the legal department.

They refused to budge on any kind of monetary settlement, but they did break the lease and pay my lawyer’s fees. (They were also not smart enough to put a gag clause on the agreement I signed, obviously.) My lawyer believed that if we had sued them instead of agreeing to that settlement, they would have come back with a settlement that did include some money for damages. But by that time, I was so desperate to get some sleep again that I took the deal I could live with rather than risk it on one I might not be able to live with.

Some additional tips

If you need a lawyer…

Call lots of lawyers. Sometimes when they don’t want your case because it doesn’t sound like big bucks, they will tell you you don’t have a case, which is misleading and should be illegal in my opinion. A good lawyer should at least make suggestions. Even if you don’t have a huge winnable lawsuit, that doesn’t mean you have no legal options to improve your situation. Many, many legal issues can be resolved without ever going near a court.
If you can’t afford to retain a lawyer at all, check your area for tenant advocacy groups that provide counsel free of charge to people who need it.
Some lawyers will advise you on how to do the work yourself, which can bring your cost down to one billable hour or a flat, affordable fee for drafting a document.

Good luck!

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Posted in Do It Yourself, Scam Notices on February 1, 2010
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