What I Learned When I Had to Break a Lease

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 not designed to be a fair system.

I’ve only ever needed to break a lease once, and I had a very good reason. Here’s what I learned from that experience?

Do you have a legally valid reason to break your lease?

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

“Uninhabitable” conditions like an infestation of bugs, broken or malfunctioning windows or doors, 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 building manager’s failure to do anything about neighbors who repeatedly violate noise rules (and indeed partying with said neighbors).
Your landlord or anyone else entering your apartment without giving you 24 hours’ notice. You can waive this right and give him permission to enter, but he can’t waive it and enter on his own, except in cases of emergency (such as flooding that requires emergency repairs to your apartment).

Other Good Reasons?

Unfortunately, this leaves out a lot of legitimate issues. Like discovering your neighbors run a meth lab (although that could fall under a health hazard). Or suddenly finding yourself needing to use a wheelchair in an apartment that’s not accessible. Or losing your job and being unable to pay your rent.

A reasonable landlord should try to work with you in circumstances like these. But not all landlords are reasonable. Many landlords are actually just hedge funds nabbing up properties for investment. They have no interest in spending money, and they love suing people when it could make them more money than it costs.

Why Not Just Leave?

A judge asked me this when a building management company literally instructed me to sue them because they wouldn’t pay for plumbing repairs in my flooded apartment otherwise. I’ll tell you what I told him.

The building was holding my first and last months’ security deposit. I couldn’t afford to put down a deposit on another apartment without having those deposits back. I couldn’t pay rent at both places, either.

And when you’ve signed a lease, you’re on the hook for that money. You owe them the rest of those months of money. Unless you can work out a deal.

Negotiating a Lease Break

I called several local tenant attorneys and/or tenant advocacy groups to find out my options. They will usually talk to you for free and give you a few important bits of information, until you find one that will actually take your case (if needed).

Some of the things I learned included:

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 they lease it again in three months, you would only be obligated to pay for three months’ rent and possibly their advertising costs for getting it rented.
And if they rent it again for less than what you were paying, you could be obligated to make up the difference.

These aren’t cheap options for most of us. Sure, in big cities, no apartment should be hard to rent out within a few weeks. But what if you’re in a rural area?

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 trust your landlord, 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.

When The Landlord Isn’t Doing Their Part

Let’s say your reason for breaking the lease is legitimate, but your landlord refuses to make things simple. Or your landlord is a slumlord who has broken the terms of your lease, but won’t talk to you or a lawyer because they just don’t care. The burden is unfortunately on you to prove his wrongdoings. And sometimes it’s hard to even find out who owns the building!

Here’s what I learned:

DO NOT STOP PAYING RENT

This is very important. Withholding rent will get you evicted faster than you can bring trouble down on your landlord – within days, sometimes.

In some states, you can put your rent into an escrow fund and advise the landlord he’ll get it as soon as he holds up his side of the lease. But do this with the help of a lawyer or tenant advocacy group. You need to find out the exact process from someone who knows, and it varies from state to state.

Involve city/county inspectors

Once upon a time, I was living in a building with inoperable windows. I couldn’t find out who owned the building until I got a lawyer to look into it. But they ignored all my communication about it.

Fortunately, the county felt differently about it. I got a building inspector to cite them for repairs. The management company then made repairs that also weren’t up to code, and they didn’t even get permits to do the work. Yes, these people are unbelievable.

So, feeling a little insulted and therefore irritable, the inspector cited them to replace every freakin’ window in the entire complex. That meant hundreds of windows, which must have cost them many thousands of dollars. And he ordered their managers to attend a school for owners who are about to be officially declared slumlords.

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.

Local ordinances

Despite all this, the company had no intention of letting me break my lease. But there was also a huge problem with noise in the building – constant partying from neighbors who were, I later learned, tipping the manager cash to look the other way.

I gave the manager many chances to stop the parties, but he was usually at them – go figure! I called the police several times, and they cited my neighbors. But the $500+ fines didn’t phase these neighbors. Fines only work on people who mind paying them.

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 weren’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 looked for a lawyer.

Bringing a lawyer into it

I found a lawyer I was happy with by searching “best tenant attorneys in [my city]” online and calling them. Several firms told me my case was not of interest to them, or they were too busy to take it on, but they could recommend a young, competent lawyer who would relish it.

He wrote a demand letter laying out my damages for pain and suffering, the company’s breaking of the lease terms 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, 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 on 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. My lawyer believed that if we had sued them instead of agreeing to that settlement, they would have come back with a settlement that included money for damages.

But by that time, I was so desperate to remember what sleeping felt like 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, they tell you that you don’t have a case. That’s not right. A good lawyer should at least make suggestions. Even if you don’t have a huge money 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. They provide counsel free of charge to people who need it.
Some lawyers will advise you on how to do the work yourself. That can bring your cost down to one billable hour or a flat, affordable fee for drafting a document.

Good luck!