Can I Break My Lease If I Buy a House?

Table of Content

• What You Need to Know About Kansas’s Fair Housing Act
• Consequences of Illegal Lease Breaking
• Ready to Break Your Lease After Buying a House?
• There are no laws in the U.S. that allow renters to automatically break their lease when they become a homeowner.
• Sublet Your Apartment or Find a New Tenant
• The Pros And Cons Of Breaking A Lease To Buy A House
• Review Your Rental Lease Agreement
• You Could Lose Your Large Security Deposit

Giving your landlord as much notice as possible will make their life easier because it gives them more time to find your replacement after you move out. Say goodbye to the days of needing to sell your home before buying a new one. There’s an easier way, and our FREE guide breaks down how it can work for you. Find AgentsIf you don't love your Clever partner agent, you can request to meet with another, or shake hands and go a different direction.

When you have a month-to-month lease, you only have to stay in your lease for a month at a time instead of a full year. You may have to pay a bit more each month in rent when you are month-to-month, but that cost may be worth the flexibility you’ll gain. If your rental property has problems and the landlord has refused to fix them, you have legal options. You can go to court to make sure that your landlord does not sue you for breaking the lease and may even get compensated.

What You Need to Know About Kansas’s Fair Housing Act

The “Month to Month” agreement indicates how you plan on managing your “rental” rate – and it would be evaluated each “month”. The “notice to vacate” would remain the same in any term lease. However, you will want to see if there is a stipulation in the lease that says something like, “all notices are subject to the last day of the month” . You will want to make sure that the 30 day notice starts the count on the day that you actually GIVE the notice.

Many states have laws about mitigating damages if a lease is broken. Basically, both you and the landlord must try to find another tenant to take your place if you move out early. You’re reducing the rent amount that is owed for the remaining months. Still, there’s a pervasive myth floating around that says renters are allowed to break their lease early if they’ve bought a house. There are other versions that say the rule applies to first-time homebuyers, specifically.

Consequences of Illegal Lease Breaking

Without a landlord’s permission, there aren’t actually many ways you can legally break a lease agreement early. It’s generally legally justifiable to break a lease in extreme circumstances – such as your apartment becoming uninhabitable, you have to move for military purposes or you’re in danger or a victim of domestic violence. If you just want to break a lease to buy a house, it can be a little more complicated. Landlord tenant laws that allow you to break a lease are different from state to state. In many places, you can get out of your lease without penalty for a number of reasons, such as domestic violence, an unsafe environment, or if you’ve been called up for military service. Similar to other states, if the tenant has broken the lease agreement they are required to continue paying rent until a new tenancy starts and pay the re-letting costs, including advertising fees.

The landlord must make reasonable attempts to find a new tenant as quickly as possible. In South Australia, when a property is moved out of early it's considered abandonment. If the rent is not paid in full the owner can claim costs incurred for re-letting the property. For example if the re-letting fee is $400 and there is six months left to go on a 12-month agreement then the fee is $200, which is 50%.

Ready to Break Your Lease After Buying a House?

Legally, if your landlord doesn’t support you breaking the lease, you don’t have many options unless you have a reason for breaking the lease backed by an extreme circumstance. If you need to move for military purposes, your apartment becomes inhabitable, or you’re a victim of domestic violence, you should be able to break your lease. If you live in a rental property, chances are you signed a lease.

I have one such property out of state that insists on it. Many states require landlords to take reasonable steps to rerent their unit when a tenant breaks their lease. This means that if you leave your lease early and your landlord rerents the unit before your lease ends, then the rent received from the new tenant will apply to your debt.

Your landlord could request payment for the rest of your lease. While simply explaining the situation to your landlord might not always end up being very helpful, it never hurts to try. If you’re honest with your landlord about your intentions to move ahead of time, you might be able to work with them and find a solution that works for both parties. Hi Charles, it would be best for you to read your lease and talk to your landlord about any applicable clauses.

Use our Notice to Vacate to give official notice to your landlord that you’ll be moving out of the property. Jana Freer has held a California real estate license since 2006 and has written extensively about the U.S. real estate market since 2011. Once you’ve exhausted all your options, the last recourse is to pay off the rent for the remainder of your lease period. Room Rental Agreement to rent the rooms in your dwelling (with your landlord’s permission). Consider finding a new renter to either relet or sublet the property.

Sublet Your Apartment or Find a New Tenant

Victims may terminate the lease upon providing three days’ written notice and proof of victim status. Landlords must change the locks upon request within 48 hours of receiving written notice and proof of victim status or court order if the perpetrator is a lessee (765 ILCS 750/20). The landlord may charge a reasonable fee for the lock change. If you’ve heard that it’s possible to break your lease early if you can provide proof that you bought a new home, that’s not necessarily true. In most cases, you won’t be able to escape a rental agreement with no consequences just because you closed on a house.

When you rent a home, though, you have better options than to break your lease. Subletting is when you find a renter to assume your lease, move into your home, and make your monthly payments. Your landlord may background-check your subletting tenant and ask for an interview.

Once the notice is delivered, the earliest the lease can terminate is 30 days after the beginning of the next rent period. So for example, if the notice was delivered on the 23rd of March, and the rent is due on the 1st of each month, the earliest the lease can terminate is May 1st . Even if your landlord decides to let you out of your lease early, they may require you to pay them an early termination fee. And while longer leases offer renters the security of a fixed rent amount for a fixed term, there are times when short-term leases are attractive — like when you're thinking of buying a home. When you buy a home, it’s good to have at least six months’ worth of savings in your bank accounts.