Breaking a Lease

[Babb67]

My girlfriend and I recently signed a lease for an apartment. The application was very low key, no credit check was done and we signed that very day. I am 20 and my girlfriend is 19. We are inexperienced and her parents decided that they didn't like the apartment after the fact. We tried to explain the situation to the landlord having only been 24 hours since we signed. I understand if he wants to keep the deposit, but he won't break the lease unless someone else moves into the apartment. Is their any sort of law which allows a person to back out of a contract within a certain amount of time? And also, if we do find a person to take the lease, do we get our deposit back?
Also, we are not supposed to move in until Feb 1st, so how does that work? Is the lease already "in effect" or what? Does that give me any grounds to break the lease?

Missouri resident

[Edited by Babb67 on 01-18-2001 at 11:17 PM]

 

[djdj]

Look at it this way, The landlord has a right NOT to lose even one days rent. so you are both liable for the rent untill someone signs a new lease and pays the landlord rent.

So if the landlord re rents the place and the lease starts tomorrow then you should get back part of your deposit, if the lease starts on the Feb 1st, and you were supposed to move in Jan 1st, well you get zero.

also you are liable for any expense the landlord incurs to re rent such as advertising credit checks etc that will aslo be deducted from your deposit.

So the landlord cannot lose any money, if he does then you have to reimburse him.

But it is good to think about this, with a lease you have FAR more rights then without one....