Tenant Moved out Prior to Lease End Date

[Alexis Garcia]

I am currently house hacking a single family home and had a signed lease agreement with a tenant. The tenant had been staying in my house for a few months now. But, I recently found out that he just got up and left months before his lease term ended. He left behind the keys and took some of his personal belongings with him. I've tried to communicate with him as he still has 3 months left per the signed lease agreement, but no answer. 

What approach should I take here since I am now missing out on 3 month's worth of rent that I was expecting according to our lease agreement? Is there any way that I can report this to the credit bureaus and have this broken lease shown on his credit history? Any way I can enforce the lease so he pays me back the rest of the lease term? 

Any and all thoughts on how to handle would be greatly appreciated, thanks! 

[Alexis Garcia]

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

Quote from @Alexis Garcia:

1. Don't waste time worrying about how much you're losing because that's only cuasing you to lose more. Start looking for a new Tenant and place someone as quickly as possible.

2. You can only hold the departing Tenant liable for lost income. If they left May 1 and you place a new tenant May 20th, then you can hold them responsible for 20 days of lost rent, not the entire three months.

3. Once you determine the amount lost, try to contact them and bill them. If you can't reach them, then the next step is to (a) sue them (hard to do with no address), (b) send them to collections, or (c) write it off.

You are unlikely to find them or squeeze anything out of them, so I would focus on filling the unit and writing it off. In the future, consider a hefty deposit to cover your losses in situations like this.

 Thank you, Nathan! Really appreciate your input as this is my first experience dealing with this situation. Will learn from it and keep moving forward.