In between tenants

[Julie Park]

I have another question and seeking for advices. My tenants breaking the lease early with no justified reason (military duty/domestic violence etc..) there are couple of days of vacancy until new tenants move in which I am going to utilize that time to do some deep cleaning. Even if he is the one who breaks the lease early, I have to eat the cost during the vacancy of rent lost? I know its not much but i really want to know and learn. He is saying neither of renters should pay for turnaround which I understand and agree with, but this situation is I thought different since he is leaving in the middle of the month after breaking the lease early. Should this be treated the same as regular turnaround period and not charging anything? 

[Dan H.]

Quote from @Julie Park:

Quote from @Dan H.:

The rules associated with tenant ending lease early varies by jurisdiction, but I know of no jurisdiction that does not allow you to charge for the reasonable time until new tenant is found. This includes the tenant turn over time as you would not need a tenant turn over or the associated expense if the tenant had not terminated the lease early. 

In my tenant friendly jurisdiction, a tenant that terminated lease early would be charged for the time the unit is not rented and the tenant turn over costs.  You would have neither of these expenses at this time if the tenant honored their lease so it is fair that the tenant pay these expenses.  

Good luck

 Thank you. He found the new tenants for us and he is arguing that if he had known, he would have signed them the lease right after he moves out. No vacancy days at all. He said he left 2days in between for us to do cleaning. In this case, do I still charge him those two days of rent lost? 

 My view is legally you can charge the tenant, but if there were only 2 days of vacancy and the tenants found you the qualified replacement tenants, I would not charge them.  I would be grateful.  Just make sure you screen these new  tenants as you would any tenants.  If they found you poorly qualified tenants, that has zero value.

I have similar policy for length of stay related to not charging everything I could legally charge.  A tenant that has been in the unit a long time that has a small amount of tenant damaged items, we list the damage on the check out, but we list it as no charge.  However, a tenant that resides in the unit a shorter period of time would get charged for the damage that they did.

You have virtually no vacancy.  You have a qualified tenant found by your vacating tenant.  You likely have a new lease term that is beyond when the original lease would have expired.  You may have an increase rent amount.  sounds great.

Good luck