Fixed Lease Question

Shadowless

Hi all, I'm hoping someone out there can help me with what is a pretty simple question. Tried reading the 2004 Tenancies act and I've looked up a few websites but I seem to have got conflicting info and I've just ended up more confused.

Basically at the minute myself and 3 mates are renting a house in Dublin city centre. When we moved in we signed a fixed term lease for one year and paid a deposit equal to one month's rent. The lease is in just one name (not me) but I don't think that's relevant really. We've been living there for just over 5months now and have had no major problems with the place.

Anyway for one reason or another we've decided that we would like to move out in September i.e. quit the lease early.

What I want to know is if we leave are we
a) entitled to our deposit back?
b) entitled to leave but not to our deposit?
c) liable for the rent til the end of the lease?

All comments appreciated.

jubi lee

check your contract....
it should outline what the penalty would be for quitting the lease early.

Shadowless

I read through it last night and it didn't mention anything about quitting early. That's why I'm so confused.

Afuera

Shadowless wrote:

I read through it last night and it didn't mention anything about quitting early. That's why I'm so confused.

I think according to the contract he would be entitled to take the deposit and charge you for the remaining time on the contract.

In practise though you could negotiate it with the landlord/agency. For example, if you found other tenants to take your place, he would have a harder time justifying his reason for taking your deposit and/or charging you for the rest of the lease.

Shadowless

Found this in one of the daft.ie discussions there now. Don't know how accurate it is though. Anyone agree/disagree?

Link

Daft.ie wrote:

Breaking a lease can be messy, but the landlord does not have to take your
deposit and certainly will not be able to charge you for the rest of the year indefinately!!
Firstly, if you give one months notice and ask the landlord if you may find a suitable replacement then it is your responsibility to find someone to replace you. With your landlords consent this is perfectly legal and you will be entitled to your deposit back.
Secondly, if your landlord refuses this offer then it is up to him to find someone else and the fact that you offered is enough, from a legal standpoint, he is now actually required to give you your deposit back as you have given a month's notice and offered to find a replacement.
From a legal standpoint a landlord could only force a tenent to pay the remainder of the lease if the landlord does not rent to someone else AND the tenent does not offer to find someone else for the apartment.
Finally, if your landlord is being a prick there are several things you can do:
1. Find out if he is paying tax, ask for his pps number, if he refuses to give it you can explain to him that you will be getting your deposit back or he will be getting a nasty letter from the tax office. I know this is vicious, but there are a lot of nasty landlords out there, believe me!
2. If he is a legal, tax paying landlord he still may not be registered with the PRTB. This is the private residential tenancy board and it is a government run body that handles despute resolution between landlords and tenents. If your landlord is not registered then he or she will incur a fine of 3000 euro if you report them. You can find out if your landlord and your accomodation is registered by looking at www.prtb.ie the website contains the full list of all accommodation that is registered with the prtb.
Finally, if he is registered for tax and also registered with the prtb you can still get your deposit back, via legal avenue, as mentioned above. Tell him you are leaving, give one months notice, offer to replace yourself, give this in writing if possible, and go to threshold (www.threshold.ie) or the prtb for dispute resolution.
If you are in a situation where your exe-landlord has taken your deposit you can still get it back with the small claims court. They now have the facility where you can actually apply online. Well worth it!!

Also, if all else fails don't pay your last months rent, if it is via bank deposit or letting agency he may not even notice until your gone.

Good luck and good renting

Ste.phen

This fits well with my interpretation of the Act:
- You have to stay until the end of the lease unless you can get someone to replace you for the remainder of the fixed term
- if the landlord refuses to let you do this, you can just leave with the appropriate notice (30 days i think, unsure), and that's your obligation to them met.

antoinolachtnai

This is a really tricky area. The law is very ambiguous about the area of 12 month minimum leases if you are between the sixth and twelfth month. There is not really a definitive ruling on it that I know of.

Personally, I would try to do this the right way, i.e., give the landlord as much notice as possible of your intent. If the landlord has any sense, he won't try to keep someone who doesn't want to be there in his apartment.

Trinity

I spoke to an agent today regarding same. Dont know if it was just his rules though!

He said if you break the lease early you are entitled to your deposit however you will be liable for 6% of the remaining rent for the remainder of the term of the lease.

However if they do not manage to replace you, you may be liable for the entire rent!! A lot of landlords will let you away with it if you find someone to replace you, it depends how fair they are!

Perhaps offer to pay for the ad and arrange interviews?

sharpsuit

OP mentioned that there were problems with the accommodation. What kind of problems are they? If the problems represent a breach by the landlord of his obligations to the tenants, OP should ask the landlord to rectify the problem and if this does not happen, OP can give 28 days notice.

If the problems are not so bad as to warrant the tenants giving notice, OP can use section 186 of the Residential Tenancies Act. This section provides that a tenant in a fixed-term lease can seek to assign the lease to somebody else. This means that OP can bring in someone to replace him in the tenancy.

If the landlord refuses to accept the new tenant to replace OP, OP can give notice to leave. The amount of notice depends on how long OP has been in the tenancy (1 to 6 months, 28 days; 6 to 12 months, 35 days etc).

The lease might also include a 'break clause' and if so, OP won't have to seek to assign the lease to somebody else.

Ace2007

I have the feeling that the OP had no intention of staying the full year.... would i be right?

The_Conductor

Ace2007 wrote:

I have the feeling that the OP had no intention of staying the full year.... would i be right?

Why-ever would they have entered into a 1 year lease in that case?

Ace2007

smccarrick wrote:

Why-ever would they have entered into a 1 year lease in that case?

cause they liked the place and were running out of time on getting a place before they started work... no?

Supercell

I've been renting for 18 years now and have never ever met a landlord that held the years lease over me (at least six different landlords).

That said I always pay my rent on time and never ever caused hasstle.

If you have been a good tenent, just give him about a months notification and you should be fine without having to go on about rights and entitlements, there honestly is no need for it with most landlords.
Most of them are just ordinary people and if you treated their property with respect they won't screw you about.

Just be honest and upfront with your landlord and agree with him whats best for both of you.
If its a nice place in a rentable area and you havent wrecked it, then it should be no hasstles all round.

The_Conductor

Longfield wrote:

I've been renting for 18 years now and have never ever met a landlord that held the years lease over me (at least six different landlords).

That said I always pay my rent on time and never ever caused hasstle.

If you have been a good tenent, just give him about a months notification and you should be fine without having to go on about rights and entitlements, there honestly is no need for it with most landlords.
Most of them are just ordinary people and if you treated their property with respect they won't screw you about.

Just be honest and upfront with your landlord and agree with him whats best for both of you.
If its a nice place in a rentable area and you havent wrecked it, then it should be no hasstles all round.

Sounds like you've had a lot of very professional responsible landlords. The problem from a lot of people's perspectives at the moment, is that very recently (in the last 2-3 years) a lot of people have bought buy-to-let property who were never previously in the business. In most cases they are decent people, who most probably are akin to all the landlords you've encountered down the years. Unfortunately there are also a sizeable number who are in it simply for the money- and are very very worried now that interest rates have gone up and property prices down. It is this band of unprofessional punters who really do not know what they are doing, who are giving a lot of the more experienced landlords very bad names.

Its in a landlords best interests to have decent tenants who pay their rent on time and respect their landlords property and take good care of it. Unfortunately, when chasing short term gains, a lot of the more recent landlords seem to have forgotten this simple fact.

Best of good luck OP- perhaps you'd like to tell us what happens.

Shadowless

Hope nobody minds me bumping this thread. We got in contact with the landlord shortly after I posted this up. Like many of you suspected he turned out to be dead sound about it and had no problem giving us the deposit back. I got the feeling he's thinking of selling before the market slides further and that us moving out suited all parties. Anyway just thought I'd let you know that there turned out to be a happy ending after all.

Again cheers for the advice, even though there were no problems it was great to know where we stood before we had to talk to him.