Broke lease by two weeks...

[JBelmont]

California: Back in late January, my wife and I located a house for rent that was availablein the begining of march, we decided to take it and extend the time it took to move into the second week of march due to the expiration of our lease. We gave notice of our desire to vacate on the 20th of January dated for march 11th. I delivered this in person to our community management office and specifically asked what our total for those days would be, they informed me it would only be 11/31st of our rent totalling just under 300$. We paid that renton Feb 23rd and confirmed, the amount as well as the date of vacancy, still no word of any early lease termination penalty. Today I was cleaning out my files and I ran across the old lease so I decided to follow up with them in regards to the whereabouts of our security deposit, they informed me we owed them 550$ more to cover the early termination fee (750$). if we already paid 300$ in rent + 550 more in penalties on top of the witheld 200$ deposit, that totals $1050 or 300$ more than one months rent... Is that legal? Also when I went by after vacancy I was informed that the apartment was so perfectly clean the new tennant moved in just 4 days after we moved out., why should we have to pay an early tremination fee when they got the rest of the months rent from the new tennant??? If you could please point me to specific CA codes I would be greatly appreciative.

Jeff

 

[HomeGuru]

You have a small claims court case.

 

[LL]

You may be interested in my experience of the last two months:

I received notice February 11, of intended vacation on March 31, for a lease ending August 31. The tenant is a very likeable young man, who is leaving for a job transfer and decided to get married at the same time. He has been a good tenant.

Note that, while vacancy rates are very low in this area, the market is seasonally depressed from November until about Easter.

I found a suitable tenant in the first half of March, who had not yet given notice to his present landlord. Thus, I negotiated a replacement lease to begin April 15 (this coming weekend) until August 31 (4-1/2 months), and at the same rate that the vacating tenant had been paying ($ 1095/mo for a studio apt). To make this deal, I promised to the new tenant to paint and shampoo the carpet.

CA law allows me to charge all costs which are "necessary to compensate the lessor for all the detriment proximately caused by the lessee's failure to perform his obligations under the lease or which in the ordinary course of things would be likely to result therefrom."

Which costs are involved here?

1. Rent from April 1 through April 14. $511.00
2. Painting $490.00
3. Clean & Shampoo carpet $175.00
(note: I invited the tenant to leave the apartment dirty, and I would purchase a package to include both cleaning & carpet shampoo, since he would be charged for the carpet shampoo in any case, and he agreed. Carpet shampoo would have been $150.00 by itself)
4. Tenant screening cost $ 35.00
5. Electricity on clean & show basis $ 25.00
6. Advertising $ 235.00
6. My personal expenses, for which I did not charge although I am entitled to do so:
xx a) mileage, 16 trips, 36.4 miles one-way @ $0.32/mile = $ 372.34
xx b) my travel time, 45 minutes one-way (no traffic) @ $25/hour = $ 600.00
xx c) my time to supervise painter, 8.5 hours = $ 204.00
xx d) my time to supervise cleaning crew, 4 hours = $ 100.00
xx e) my time to show apartment, estimated at 5 hours total = $ 125.00
xx f) extra telephone costs, plus time to answer or return calls (unable to estimate)

Thus, on a direct billing basis, my recoverable costs are at least $2872.34, where I found a tenant within 30 days of receiving notice, for nearly immediate occupancy. These costs may be compared to the monthly rental of $ 1095.

Many landlords use a round number that they charge all tenants breaking a lease, on a "liquidated damages" basis, that is, they are willing to accept a flat fee to represent their costs in all cases, instead of directly billing the vacating tenant for each expense. CA law does not forbid this.

The law does not allow landlord to re-rent the apartment for anything more than the same terms as the vacating tenant. The theory here is that the landlord is not supposed to take any benefit from the re-rental, such as a higher rent or a longer lease term, etc. In this case, the landlord is forbidden to try to re-rent except for the remainder of the month in which the tenant is vacating, or he loses his right to recover anything for the balance of the lease.

In my own case, I consider myself to be a good manager, and in JBELMONT's case, I probably would have written to the vacating tenant that I think that I am unlikely to be able to find a tenant for the remainder of the month, and therefore I expect the entire month's rent from him due at the beginning of the month. At the end of that period, his lease would terminate, and he would be free from any obligation of the lease. His failure to pay the last month's rent would result in an unlawful detainer filing. I would point out that it was his unreasonable action to try to cut short his payments by a few weeks that placed me in this untenable position.


[Edited by LL on 04-12-2001 at 04:34 PM]

 

[trismegistus]

No offense, LL, but it seems ridiculous that you could charge for your personal expenses in showing the apartment. I have a hard time believing you would get that money if you went to court over it. Your having to drive back and forth and make phone calls were not "proximately caused by the lessee's failure to perform his obligations under the lease or which in the ordinary course of things would be likely to result therefrom." You would have had to do those things when the lease was up anyway--you just had to do them a few months sooner.

Oh, well. Good thing my landlord lives just across town.

 

[LL]

What would be the basis for thinking that "it seems ridiculous that you could charge for your personal expenses in showing the apartment"

The contract provides for a guaranteed income stream to the landlord for a fixed period. The landlord is not expected to have to take on these additional expenses in the face of these guarantees. They are always awarded in court because it is so clear-cut a case of expenses incurred because of lessee's failure to perform his obligations.

When the lease is over, including for the replacement tenant, the landlord will have to show the apartment once again. That means, he showed it to get the original tenant (at landlord's expense, of course), he'll have to show it again when the lease is over (again at his own expense, as it should be). But he now has to show it additionally in mid-lease because the original tenant has failed to perform his end of the contract. And, the additional showing is on the original tenant's behalf, so that he won't have to pay rent until the end of the lease for a vacant apartment.

Under these circumstances, who should pay? For the gas, for the time (spending this time wasn't part of the original bargain), for the telephone expense?

What makes you think of it as ridiculous? Is it that you just never thought of your lease as a business contract, where additional services need to be paid for? If you go to Jack-in-the-Box and ask for bacon on your cheeseburger, there is an extra cost, to cover materials and labor. Do you tell the manager that it is ridiculous for him to charge that?

Where do you think that I got these figures? $ 0.32 per mile for travelling? $ 25/hour for my time. I didn't just take these figures out of the air. California courts allow landlords $15/hour for unskilled work, $25/hour for skilled experienced work. No one unskilled can show the apartments, do the work of pre-screening tenants over the telephone, supervise painters and cleaning-crew. I have only had to go to court once with such a request, but it was automatically awarded. The only requirement was to prove-up how much time I had spent.

I didn't charge this tenant for my personal expenses, because he has been a good tenant, I like him, and I expect to do some things in the course of business, to make things run smoothly. In this case, his failure to perform his obligations under the lease involved, lets see, over 40 hours of my time, not even counting answering the telephone (probably averaging 4 - 6 calls per day for a month, weekends included. Now, the tenant could have done a lot of that work for me, taking the responsibility to advertise, screen callers, show the apartment, etc., but he never volunteered to.

Is your objection just that you wouldn't like to pay these amounts, or is it really an illogical idea from the start? As I point out in my posting, many landlords, especially corporate ones, make a flat fee charge instead of billing for each additional expense, and that's what it covers.