In a legal scenario, a tenant may opt for breaking a lease for many different reasons. The tenant may want to move to a different state, or there may be a change in their marital status or in their living condition. Usually, every tenant is likely to have some financial obligations to his or her landlord and therefore, it is the responsibility of the tenant to abide by it. Normally, you would find that the terms and conditions for the lease are included in the agreement. When the tenant informs the landlord that he or she has decided upon breaking the lease, both parties are required to make a sincere effort in renting the house once again. This would not only help to alleviate the damages but also reduce the amount of money that the tenant owes to the landlord. Below are answers to few of the more common questions about the terms and conditions of a breaking a lease agreement: Based on an anonymous tip, if the police enter the house for search of drugs, can a tenant legally break a lease considering it as an objection? Since the lease is not yet expired, is it okay to not release their deposit? It cannot be a legal ground for your tenant to break the lease just because the police are visiting. However, if your tenants have already decided to vacate the house, you can possibly negotiate a month’s rent with them instead of declaring the agreement void. Till you find the next tenant, this would help you cover for that period. In case, they refuse to accept your offer and choose to leave, you do have the right to sue them in court for any rent that is due and which they are ought to pay till the lease end. You could then adjust that amount once you find a new renter. You must however keep in mind that you are reasonably responsible to find a new tenant through due diligence if you want to reduce the amount of losses. It’s a month since we have shifted to our new house, but our landlord did not make the repairs as was promised. Therefore, I want to break the lease, although, I don’t have any provisions for doing that. How can I fight this? In this kind of a situation, you may argue that there was a violation of the lease contract by your landlord who did not provide habitable premises. Usually, a warranty of habitability is implied in the lease agreements. Therefore, it is an obligation for the owner to make sure that the rental property should meet certain basic standards of habitability that are meant to be occupied by tenants. If there is a violation to the lease agreement, the landlord should try to reduce damages by re-renting the property. In a situation like this, the former tenant should also try and help in finding a new renter to the landlord. However, at times it may happen that the landlord might refuse to rent the property to the new renter without any obvious reason despite the fact that the renter matches all the conditions fixed by the landlord in selecting tenants. In such a case, if the landlord demands rent from the old tenant for the remaining lease period, the tenant can use this as a defense for that situation. On the other hand, if a tenant violated a lease agreement, then the tenant owes the landlord the rent for the existing period of the lease. Thus, it is always better to have full-proof legal agreement in such situations. If you need any clarification about your particular situation with respect to breaking a lease agreement, you may wish to ask a real estate lawyer for legal insight based on an expert evaluation of your circumstances.
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