What if future tenant wants to cancel before move in date?

[Lucero Sanchez]

We made a rental agreement with our future tenant yesterday with move in date of June 15th she gave us the security deposit, first months rent and pet deposit yesterday. So my question is, what happens if in the event our tenant decides to cancel the contract? What percentage should we give her back? I hope this doesn't happen but I was just wondering and I'm sure it's good to know. Does anyone have any suggestions or has had this happen before?

[Levi T.]

I'm not sure what the legal answer is. But I would not give them any of it back until I had rented the property again, less lost rents or commission fees.

 We have had that happen. Most the time we just negotiated the exit price or tell them they were not getting their money back. A few times we've had people move-in and then decide to move out..  out-of-state tenants sometime like to use property as staging ground for arriving at a city before finding a place they want to really rent or own. We've had it happen a time or two. Just part of the biz.