Tenant vacating early

[Rose Mize]

I have a tenant in Kansas. The tenant notifiied me his family was moving out in December, but he was staying. He asked me to list the home, but said he would stay until it was occupied. He signed a new addendum to the lease stating the lease ends in May 2019, but if it is occupied sooner, then we would terminate early. The house needed some work to get ready to relist, and we had to wait until the family moved their stuff out (which was done by Feb 1). We decided to list home for sale instead of rent, and this is agreed to in addendum signed by all parties. 

The house has been on the market for 2 weeks, but it’s a slow time and the area has been hit with non-stop bad weather. The realtor mentioned to me me that the tenant said he was moving out in March. I called him and he stated he was moving out in March, but he will continue to pay rent until May and will keep utilities on and contract with landscaping company to maintain yard.

Our lease does have a vacating clause that states we will take repossession within 3 days of home becoming vacant and tenant is still responsible for rent thru remainder of lease unless it’s occupied sooner. So do I let him physically move out but continue to maintain utilities and premesis, or do I treat this as vacating and early termination of the lease? My main concern is what I do about the security deposit. There are some damages, which the tenant will most likely put up a fight about as he maintains water damage due to not cleaning out gutters and failure to report leak in shower for 1.5yrs is not his fault because he did not notice. I have a letter from contractor stating that water leak was due to debris in gutters.

In KS, I have 30 days to return deposit or provide accounting, but how do I figure charges if he still has 2.5 months remaining on lease and I do not know if home will become occupied before then? Our lease does state that deposit can be used for rent, so do I deduct rent for remaining time on lease and damages on the initial accounting statement (this would exceed his deposit of 1 month’s rent)? Would I give him a certain amount of time to pay additional amount owed, or does he pay when rent would regularly be due? 

* Tenant is military and received his retirement orders in Nov (he will retire September 2019), but he has not given any notice to terminate lease under military clause (which I don’t even know if he could, based on some wording of the clause reporting that an ETS is not a qualifying event and he knew his retirement date before he even signed lease). He simply desired to have his family move out initially. He also signed the addendum regarding lease still ending in May months after getting orders. Now that he is changing to moving out completely, should I inform him he needs to provide written notice to vacate? Tenant had no intention of telling me he was moving out, I just found out by accident and I only have verbal knowledge of him acknowledging he is moving out. Should I try and work out an early termination agreement? What would be a fair concession to make seeing as there is very little chance home will be occupied before his lease officially ends? Monthly rent is $1650. He paid a deposit of $1650. Damages that I know about so far are about $700, but if he doesn’t clean home before vacating it could be closer to $1200.