Early lease termination

Question on breaking a lease early

My husband and I have been renting from the same landlord for almost 5 years and have always been on a year lease. Things have come up and we are not financially able to pay our rent any longer and we still have 4 months left in our lease. We have not been able to pay our rent on time for a few months but we have been paying it in 2 payments every month and they have been accepting it. This month we got a notice on our door to vacate in 3 days, which we didn’t after I called the office and told them of our situiation and that we will have to break our lease. We are writing a letter to the landlord to give our 30 day notice and I will be sending it via certified mail in the morning since they didn’t seem real cooperative over the phone.

Here are some things I am wondering about:

#1: They have let a lot of people out of their leases early and didn’t make them pay any of the remainder months on their lease. I have been in contact with at least 3 of those people (there are more than that) and they are all willing to write letters for me stating that they were let out with no further responsibilities. If the landlord wanted to take me to court and get the remainder of our rental fees will this be enough to get out of paying him?

#2: I unfortunately didn’t take pictures or video when we moved in but I will when we move out. But they never did a walk through of our apartment when we moved in. I know this because when I started bringing things in the place was still dirty (especially the kitchen, there are still stains on the walls I wasn’t able to get off) and I called him to let him know. He said he was sorry, the regular people he had clean wasn’t avialable and he had to get somebody else to do it and that he would knock of $25 from our rent that month for the cleaning I had to do. We haven’t done much damage to the place, mostly normal wear and tear, but there were some things damaged when we moved in (mostly small holes in the wall) and there is water damage in the bathroom from a toilet bursting in an above apartment about a year ago. All of which he was called and told about.

My question is, when we move out will he be able to charge us for anything since he has no proof of what we did/didn’t do? The only damage we did is my son pushed the screen to the sliding door out a little bit (about 3″ at the seam) and my mother-in-law burned a small hole in the living room carpet (which I’m still upset about).

We moved from a basement apartment to a balcony apartment 2 (almost 3)years ago and he claimed we damaged the bathroom. We smoked in the bathroom and he said we stained the grout, which isn’t true because my husband actually lived in that same apartment when he was a teenager and it was exactly the same (he and his mother can agree to it). That and the fact that we bleached everything in the apartment before we moved, we know he was just trying to be a you-know-what.

So basically I have a feeling he is going to try to give us some problems since a lot of the apartments here are empty and he is worried.

Are there any known cases like mine that could help me in any way? We are in the Toledo area and I could use any help I can get. Thanks a bunch!

Answer on breaking a lease early

The mere fact that the landlord has allegedly let other tenants out of their leases with no further liability does not mean that you are entitled to the same treatment. What were the exact circumstances of the other tenants? How early did they leave before the end of their rental agreement? Was it a month, a week, or just a few days? Did they get someone else to take over their lease? Did someone else move in and pay more rent to the landlord?

As you can see it is dangerous to assume that your situation is similar to theirs. It seems highly unlikely that a landlord would let so many tenants out of their leases without further penalty. Afterall, a landlord is in the rental business to rent apartments and not to create vacancies.

As to damages to the apartment, I strongly recommend that you take pictures and/or video of the entire apartment. I also recommend that you hire a professional cleaning service to clean after you move your belongings out. As to the other damages, consider hiring someone to fix the screen door and the carpet and save your receipts for everything. We outline a detailed procedure for move-out in our publication below. This should protect you from wrongful charges after you have left. Thanks for your question and good luck!

———————————-

Search inside “How to Get out of your Lease”!