Lease breaker - need advice

[Maya V.]

Hello all,

I know there have been multiple threads regarding lease breaks but I was hoping to get some feedback from some of you more experienced landlords with my particular situation.

There are two issues I have with my current tenant:

1) He wants to break his lease two months early due to the fact that I would not let him have a cat 8 months into his lease that specifies NO PETS. I verbally said that I wouldn't have a problem with it until I went into the unit to do a maintenance check and saw that he was a slob and that having a cat would only intensify the uncleanliness of his situation so I told him that I would like to stick to the original "no pets policy". So now, he is willing to uproot his life to search for a cat friendly apartment requesting to break his lease. I told him that I have no problem with this but I told him that he would be responsible for any down time for re-renting the apartment (this is my only concern - I just don't want to lose any rent income due to his breaking the lease). This is a desirable in-law unit in a very desirable area of SF bay area so I am not worried about not being able to rent it out. There will be a bit of time & money exhausted on my part after he leaves painting, cleaning, screening tenants, etc. He has given me 5 weeks notice to vacate. I'm not sure how to handle negotiations with him.

2) To complicate matters, before he moved in I tore out the kitchen cabinets and installed brand new cabinets and brand new granite counters. The granite counters were sealed with a water based sealant with 2-3 coats in the appropriate recommended manner per manufacturers instructions. I stressed to the tenant to just please take care of the kitchen because it is BRAND NEW and that if he ever has any maintenance issues of ANY KIND to please let me know ASAP. 8 months roll by and I finally decide after him asking to have this cat that it might be time to do a maintenance check (originally I plan to do quarterly but it got away from me) and I go in and find the granite with multiple stains of water that had penetrated into the stone. I think from him being paranoid about damaging the granite so he has been all this time covering it with huge pieces of plexiglass cut to fit on either side of the sink. I think what has happened is that the stone has not been able to breath and caused moisture to be trapped inside. So now, he has ruined the counters and wants to break his lease. He stated the counters were not sealed properly (which infuriated me) and I told him that he should have come to me right as he noticed this happening. On each side of sink - their are literally about 15-20 three inch circular stains. By the way, we live on the same lot - I live in the main house and he lives in the in-law unit with a common backyard that is shared. So there is no reason for not properly communicating to me. I would even ask him at times how are things going back there and he would always reply "fine".

I live in the San Francisco bay area in California if it matters. Please advise of what you would do. He seems pretty amenable considering the circumstances. I just want to be fair to both parties.

Thanks in advance for any and all recommendations.

[Andrew Syrios]

To me, it sounds like this guy is almost doing you a favor (key word: almost) in wanting to break the lease. The longer he stays, cat or not, the more damage he will do. Did he agree to pay for the time to re-lease? If not, you can go through the legal process (check with your attorney, I don't know California law) to garnish his wages. To make things simpler and get your money up front instead of chasing him on the back end and probably paying some legal fees to boot, ask (or rather demand) a buyout. Maybe two months (we put three months in our lease, if we re-rent it earlier than three months, we refund the remainder).

If for whatever reason you want him to stay, ask for a pet deposit and pet rent. We ask for $250 non-refundable pet deposit and $25/month pet rent. But, given Kansas City is much cheaper than San Francisco and he's already damaged your unit, you should probably ask for more.