Need to break the lease bad

[cjmajor09]

What is the name of your state? Alabama

Here is the situation. My roommate is buying a house and I'm moving into an apartment. We are still under lease at our current location. In our lease it states as follows: If the tenant decides to terminate the lease the tenant must a) give a 30 day written notice of intention to break lease and an exact moving date b) loose all security deposit c) pay a cancellation fee and any rent and fees due up to the moving date d) sign a cancellation form. So my question is this. If we give a 30 day notice does that mean that our move out date has to be at the end of the thirty days. Our rent is due Aug. 1 and we would like to be out before then to avoid rent and cancellation fees. Due to the lease stating that all rent must be paid up to the move out date doesn't it seem that if our move out date is set for July 31 we would avoid paying rent for Aug since we will be out before rent is due since we have paid the rent for July? Any advice for somebody that has went through this or any advice from anybody?? Please help. I don't want this to be as expensive as it sounds.

 

[FarmerJ]

Too bad since you may have seen this happening earlier that you didnt take care of it then , YOU will have to follow the lease, give notice and pay some rent for august. Dont waste any more time, both of you get your notice out in the mail with at the very least a certificate of mailing so you have dated rct when letter was put into the mail system. Add a couple days on to notice dates when you send so LL still has full 30 notice. Plan on paying what the lease calls for. If you dont pay now you will pay later after the LL gets judgements against both of you.

 

[Hot Topic]

If the lease says 30 days' notice is required that you're terminating a lease, that's what you must give. Even if you sent the notification on July 16th informing the landlord that you were terminating the lease, you couldn't get out of paying any rent for August because you haven't given the required notice. Lets say the landlord gets your letter on July 17th. July 17th to July 31st is not 30 days.

When you signed the lease, you agreed to the terms set forth regarding terminating it. What you would like to do takes a backseat to what you can do.

 

[cjmajor09]

okay so say we turned the notice in on July 16 (tomorrow) and the notice was dated to end August 14th which is exactly 30 days. Do we HAVE to stay all 30 days or can we move out before the 30 days is up IF we pay rent for august. And also since the 14th is basically only two days into the month, would we get away with paying 1/2 a months rent and also the cancellation fee or would we have to pay the whole month plus the cancellation fee..We are willing to pay rent, we don't want to but we know we'll have to but we just don't want to have to waste more time and money by paying a whole month.

 

[OHlandlord]

It depends on your state whether you have to give notice at the beginning of your term or at anytime during the term. In some places, you have to give this 30 day notice to coincide with when your rent was due. (a term state) In a term state, the notice doesn't take effect until your next rent comes due (Aug 1) then ends at the end of that term (Aug 31). Other states are literal day states where you can give notice at anytime and just count forward the 30 days. Remember though, this is 30 days from when the LL recieved the notice. You may want to look through Alabama LL-Tenant law to see what it says about notices.

Either way, you are going to have to pay at least 1/2 of Aug.'s rent. You don't have to live there for those 30 days, but you have to pay the rent. I'd just pay the whole month's rent if they will let you out of your lease with only one month's rent and the deposit. If they refuse to allow you to terminate and sue you in court for breaking your lease, they would be able to get at least that much money anyways. Most states will allow a LL 1 to 2 mos. of rent until they can re-rent a unit when someone breaks a lease. And in your state, the law says your LL has no duty to look for another tenant. So you could be on the hook for the entire amount of the remainder of your lease. I'd pay it and make sure they give you a statement that you are not responsible for any other charges or rent.

 

[nextwife]

Right. In many states "30 days" is not a chronologoical 30 days from the NOTICE date, it is 30 days from the next start of rental period. That is because tenants don't want a move in date of, say, the 17th. They want the first or 15th. So, if your rental period is from the FIRST, you'd need to give notice 30 days or more in advance of the 1st on which you were moving out. When I bought my house, I gave notice July 23rd (July 1st being the start of the next rental cycle) for my actual moveout date of August 15th, but paid rent for all of August. Because they couldn't realistically be expected to expect to rent it starting the 15th at that point.