we need to terminate the lease on our studio due to financial and personal reasons (new baby enroute). we have advertised and shown our apartment at our own time and expense and found people willing to take over our current lease or sign a new lease with building management. but building management is not being cooperative (saying they cannot lease it by april 1, but we think they want the new tenant to go through their "exclusive" broker in our building, which will take longer). they are threatening to hold our security deposit for breaking the lease four months early (originally 24-month lease), even though we have potential lessees lined up and calling them. can they hold our deposit? can they hold us to our lease even though we have people willing to re-rent? thanks for any help or advice. :confused:
Have you truly given them enough notice of termination? 30 -60 days seems to be the minimum. Take a look through last months (February) Forum archives (the link is at the top of the page). Or you can do a search through the past forums and Housing Crt decisions. Try: lease termination, breaking lease etc.. Best of Luck!
http://www.tenant.net/Court/Hcourt/archive/1996/sep96.html "The tenant is, however, required to notify the landlord of the vacatur date so that the landlord has an opportunity to re-let the premises to another tenant. In general, courts no longer allow landlords to do nothing after the tenant left, let the rent build up and then sue the tenant for the balance of the rent under the lease. Courts impose upon the landlord a duty to mitigate its damages. This means the landlord, upon notice of a surrender date, must immediately make reasonable efforts to locate another tenant so that the old tenant is no longer responsible for the rent. If a landlord makes no efforts to locate a new tenant, courts generally deny landlords a right to collect the rent from the tenant who had long since vacated. These recent line of case are only applicable to residential tenants, not commercial tenants.