Tenant wants to break lease

[John Morgan]

A friend of mine wants to break her lease due to her landlord slow at fixing things. She wants to move into my vacant unit and just get out of her lease. It took a few months for him to fix something they requested as soon as she moved in. Now she has a couple other small issues and the slum lord isn’t really responsive. Can she legally in Texas break the lease and get out of it if he’s slow to fix things? I’m not sure the exact issues or how bad they are. Something about the AC not working very good. Animals living in the attic and rust or dirt coming out of a sink. She just wants out but doesn’t want to get sued. She has text messages to him with the date when she requested it Oct 4th. He finally fixed it Dec 22. She’s hoping that’s good enough to legally not get sued for breaking the lease.

[Patti Robertson]

@John Morgan - NOTE - I’m not in TX and don’t know Texas law, but come on...  You know the answer to this question. While he was slow, you did indicate he fixed the ac issue.  It wasn’t even “not working”.  According to your post it was working, but not as well as she would have liked.  I’m not saying he shouldn’t have tried to respond faster, but that’s hardly an emergency. Unless she takes him to court and a Judge approves a lease termination, her only option is to get the landlord to agree to a mutual lease termination.  If she drives him bonkers, and it sounds like she may, he just may agree.

Be warned though - it is a bad idea to rent to a friend.  Her expectations of you will be even higher than they are of her current landlord.  Pull her judgment history on the court records before you even consider the scenario.  Tell her up front that - “in the spirit of fair housing, I cannot make any exceptions for you that I don’t make for other tenants, including waiving late fees, enforcing lease terms, etc.”

My suggestion is just stay out of it and find your own unrelated tenant.