Tenant Wants to Break Lease

[Doug Wade]

Tenant signed 1 year lease in January at $975 a month and now wants to break lease to buy a house. What are my options.

Say no and force to honor, until rented? Then I have a January vacancy in a small town.

Let out and take security, Property manager would then take that money to fix anything. So I’d get nothing.

If they break, without my approval, and I take to court, I’m assuming I’d win, but how hard is it to collect after court ruling?

What would you do?

[Ethan Jacobsen]

Is there not a section in the lease that addresses lease breaks? We have a hefty lease break fee that the tenant must pay to break the lease. The tenant is also financially responsible for paying rent until the unit is re rented and a new tenant has moved in. We (property manager) collect the lease break fee and keep it (since we're doing extra work) and the tenant pays rent until a new one moves in. This basically means the owner doesn't have to suffer for a tenant breaking their lease. Their security deposit would also help cover past due rent or future due rent. Make sure there's a lease break policy in the future if you don't have one now. 

As for difficulty in collecting... it's always difficult if you go to court. Maybe you can pre lease it and encourage the tenant to help find prospective tenants to get it rented faster. It might be better to lose a little than have to go to court...