Landlord Question and Answer Forum

we entered a lease with tenant with intent to to purchase the home after 12 months, this didn't happen. we offered them an extension of six months and we would be placeing the home on the market for sale at the of march 2011. Tneant came to us on Feb 3, and said he would not be able to qualify to purchase the home and he could only $850 out of 1250 for rent from that point. We agreed to drop rent $200 the remaing part of the lease and we place the house for sale so that they could get of of the lease. They moved most of their belongs out of the house in Marchand moved in with parents (56 years old, these are not young kids). They paid Aprils rent, informed us they would pay April and May and forfiet their security depoait to cover Junes rent. We received a contract on the house 2 weeks ago, we called the tenant and ask if they wanted to stay until the end of the lease which was June 31 we needed to know so that we could put in the contract when the house would be available. tenant wanted to get out as soon as possible. they feel as if they shold get all the security deposit back, would it still be considered a broken lease?

Since you are mutually agreeing to terminate the lease agreement, I recommend that you simply make sure they pay you for whatever months they've occupied the property, and for any damages they've caused, and once those are covered, give the rest of the security deposit back to the tenants.

Posted by Renee R, MD on Tuesday, May 3, 2011