Originally posted by
@Joe Splitrock:
@Jeromie Williams legally speaking, you can only sue someone for rent when it is past due. I assume she paid June rent, so you can't sue her until July and at that time you can only sue her for unpaid July rent. Theoretically you could sue her every month for rent, but the court may not award in your favor. Although she is breaking a contract, you have responsibility to mitigate your losses by rerenting the property. You can't just let it sit vacant and sue her every month. You have to show good fait effort to rent. The damages you can recover from her are limited to your ACTUAL loss. If you get a new tenant in the property on July 1, your loss is limited to 13 of 30 days worth of rent, so 13/30 times monthly rent. You could also charge a leasing fee to cover your time finding a new tenant. The fair market value of that is 1/2 to 1 full months rent. If there was any damages or cleaning required, you could also charge that amount, but with only 17 days in the property that seems limited. Ultimately a lease break is worth 1-3 months rent depending on how it is handled. You would never be awarded a full years worth of rent and even if you were, if you rented that property to someone else during that year, you would have to refund back to the tenant because you can't "double dip" rent.
Also be aware in a normal situation where someone stops paying rent, you would normally pursue eviction. If a tenant is evicted, you are only able to collect rent up until the eviction date. You can't hold someone responsible for rent after you throw them out. In her case it is actually considered abandonment, so there is no reason to evict.
My suggestion is notify the tenant that they have a lease obligation. Tell them as a landlord, your responsibility is to remedy defects such as pest issues. She gave you no opportunity to remedy and immediately left. That doesn't eliminate her responsibility under the contract. Give her three options:
1. She is responsible for rent and utilities until you place a new tenant, whether that is two weeks or three months, etc. On top of that she must pay one months rent as a leasing fee. That is to compensate your time to find a new tenant. Let her know that is the going rate with third parting leasing agencies (get proof of that and if the going rate is less, charge less).
2. Offer her a simple lease break option. For example, she must pay two months rent. Whether it takes you one day or three months to rent the property, her fee is just two months rent.
3. She continues to pay rent and utilities every month through her lease as per the current agreement. (Obviously she will not like this option, but the point is showing her this is the current agreement. Let her break that agreement in favor of option one or two.)
Present these options in the form of a lease break agreement decision. Talk to her about how she wants to proceed. She will likely demand to pay nothing and ask for her security deposit back. I would explain to her that the problems she reported were new issues and they do not render the property inhabitable, therefore her braking the lease is not allowed. Her responsibility is reporting problems and yours is addressing them in a timely manner. Ultimately you may want to just negotiate something less for compensation. I would negotiate down to remainder of June rent and keeping the security deposit. Just be very careful with communications, because if she takes you to court, you need to show you responded properly. If you have not already done so, hire a professional pest control company to evaluate the rodent and pest compliant. If there are dead rodents, pay them to remove. Keep paperwork and get signed statements from them attesting to the actual situation. You will need this in court as proof you took action.
For future reference, do not tell a new tenant that there was a historic problem with rodents. Fix the issue, clean up the mess and if the new tenant reports a new issue, deal with it immediately. Even if a lease says "tenant is responsible for pest issues", that doesn't mean you are not responsible in certain circumstances:
1. Pre-existing pest infestations are the owners responsibility. If someone is reporting an issue within two weeks of moving into the property, that is a pre-existing situation. Even if they did a walk through, you can't expect them to see every little issue. We give tenants two weeks to report any defect that needs attention.
2. In multifamily properties, pest infestations can be created by tenants in adjoining units. Roaches and mice travel between units, so holding one tenant responsible for an issue created by another tenant is not fair. If this is multifamily, you should be taking care of any pest issue.
I would go further and say even if your lease says that pest infestation is the tenants responsibility, you may still want to take responsibility and deal with it. If the exterminator determines the tenants actions lead to the issue, you can notify them, "this one is on me, but if you keep doing X, they will come back and you will need to cover the cost next time to deal with the problem." I know some hard *** landlords just make the tenant cover everything and blame them for all problems, but that often leads to conflict and situation like you have. It is cheaper in the long run to pay $100 and fix these type of issues.
