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My wife and I live in an apartment unit owned by the Irvine Company in Irvine, California and our lease is up on 5/10/2015. We started house hunting in January because we knew it could take a while, but we ended up finding a place fairly quickly and are currently in escrow.
Looking at our current lease, there is a $4000 break fee specified (rent is $1690 a month). I guess my question is whether there is any way that can be avoided if we give them 30 days notice, attempt to find another tenant or etc.? It isn't the end of the world if we have to pay the fee, but it was my understanding that if we give 30-days notice they would be obligated to find a new tenant to rent the space? Or is that only if no break fee is specified? We might be better off just paying the remaining rent instead of breaking since we will need to be there through March anyways while escrow is happening.
Sorry if this exact situation has been given before, thanks for any help.
You can give them 30 days notice at any time and they have to make a reasonable effort to re-rent the unit and mitigate their damages. This will explain:
You'll have to continue paying rent until the unit can be re-rented, or else pay the lease break fee. If your unit is in a building where units generally are rented quickly then that would be your best option but only you can decide that.
Do you expect to close before 5/10? Before 4/10? Before 3/10?
It's too late to give 30 days notice for the next period (rent due on 3/10)
Paying the rent as due on 4/10 is the ONLY issue here.
We actually pay rent on the first of each month. It's just a weird end date because we got a 7-month extension which was agreed to on 10/10/2014
We're expecting to close in mid-March. We were told likely escrow would take around a month, but obviously that could be slightly shorter or longer. We don't mind paying rent for the entire month of March anyways since that gives us extra time to do some painting/minor repairs before moving in.
My only real question is if we give 30 days notice on say March 1st, would we have to pay the break fee or only the extra rent for the time it takes them to find a new tenant? Its a pretty popular area so I doubt it would take long to fill the vacancy.
You can give them 30 days notice at any time and they have to make a reasonable effort to re-rent the unit and mitigate their damages. This will explain:
You'll have to continue paying rent until the unit can be re-rented, or else pay the lease break fee. If your unit is in a building where units generally are rented quickly then that would be your best option but only you can decide that.
Thanks for the information, I really appreciate it.
Seriously I would just close out the lease. Stay, make sure you give the CORRECT notice to move out so your move out date coincides to the last day on kease. IF something happens and you don't close on time, the seller needs a week to move, Whatever sonething somehow sets things back now you're not scrambling to put stuff in storage or find a place for a week.
A LL in California has to mitigate. But I bet your apartment sits at the bottom of the available list for as long as possible
Don't count on escrow closing on time. They rarely do.
You'll want some overlap so that you can clean up your new house and do any painting and flooring that you want to do before you move your stuff in.
It looks like it would work out cheaper to just keep paying rent until the lease expires. Be sure to give plenty of notice that you are terminating the lease and moving out at the end of the lease term.
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