Breaking a rental lease

Escapees

What's the typical outcome if a tenant breaks a lease, e.g. say they have to move 7 months into a 1 year lease due to work reasons? Is it simply a case of losing their initial deposit and probably not being able to ask the landlord for a reference after, or might they be chased for the remaining 5 months rent? Presumably in the example above, the tenant can give a months notice if that makes a difference...

davindub

Escapees wrote: »

What's the typical outcome if a tenant breaks a lease, e.g. say they have to move 7 months into a 1 year lease due to work reasons? Is it simply a case of losing their initial deposit and probably not being able to ask the landlord for a reference after, or might they be chased for the remaining 5 months rent? Presumably in the example above, the tenant can give a months notice if that makes a difference...

Talk to the landlord, but you have the right to assign the lease to someone else without penalty, i.e. the new person takes over your lease.

The landlord can refuse in which case you can give notice without penalty.

Have a look on RTB.ie most of the information is there.

budhabob

davindub wrote: »

Talk to the landlord, but you have the right to assign the lease to someone else without penalty, i.e. the new person takes over your lease.

The landlord can refuse in which case you can give notice without penalty.

Have a look on RTB.ie most of the information is there.

This!!

I did this 2 years ago. The text under the legislation (S.38) is that you can offer to seek an assignment of the tenancy i.e. you seek replacement tenants. If the landlord accepts this, its up to you advertise, and get new tenants in and you get your deposit back. If you landlord refuses your home clear. Our landlord wasn't happy that we seek new tenants so we were happy to facilitate the viewings etc.

ABEasy

Wow, didn't know that provision was there. So basically, the landlord goes through a selection process in order to get good tenants, the tenant wants to break their contract and the landlord has a choice of agreeing to the break of contract & potentially losing money as a result or let the tenant reassign the least to any tom dick or harry who has not been vetted by the landlord? Seems inequitable.

budhabob

ABEasy wrote: »

Wow, didn't know that provision was there. So basically, the landlord goes through a selection process in order to get good tenants, the tenant wants to break their contract and the landlord has a choice of agreeing to the break of contract & potentially losing money as a result or let the tenant reassign the least to any tom dick or harry who has not been vetted by the landlord? Seems inequitable.

Ya, its a weird one. When I was looking into it there seemed to be little knowledge of it. I only found it because I read the Act to find a loophole that suited. The landlord could conceivably set a number of criteria to be met for the new tenants in terms of referees, etc etc.

__..__

Yep. Tenants can break out of a lease extremely easily. Landlord cannot. No point really I in a landlord putting a time period on a lease. It means nothing if the tenant breaks it but no DS the landlord.

qb123

Really depends on the landlord. I would guess that given the current market conditions mean that there would be no problem finding new tenants, that at most they would take deposit. If you give a month's notice, you might even find them open to returning some of it. Realistically, there's no point pursuing you for 5 months rent. End of the day, best thing is to talk to the landlord explaining the situation and see what the best arrangement both of you can work out (assuming reasonable behaviour on both sides).

justback83

ABEasy wrote: »

Wow, didn't know that provision was there. So basically, the landlord goes through a selection process in order to get good tenants, the tenant wants to break their contract and the landlord has a choice of agreeing to the break of contract & potentially losing money as a result or let the tenant reassign the least to any tom dick or harry who has not been vetted by the landlord? Seems inequitable.

Not in my case, we had to screen potential candidates and present their applications to the landlord. The landlord then decided if they were suitable or not.

Escapees

__..__ wrote: »

Yep. Tenants can break out of a lease extremely easily. Landlord cannot. No point really I in a landlord putting a time period on a lease. It means nothing if the tenant breaks it but no DS the landlord.

It was really a hypothetical question but things do seem a bit overly biased in the tenants favour. I was thinking of a scenario where a potential tenant might sign a lease knowing at the time that they may have to move and break it a few months in for whatever reason. Presumably a landlord is ideally always looking for tenants who will stay long-term, i.e. a few years rather than just 1 year (lease commitment) in the first place when they do viewings? To have a tenant bail out after some months rather than years without real penalty seems a bit backward, regardless of the circumstances...

__..__

Escapees wrote: »

It was really a hypothetical question but things do seem a bit overly biased in the tenants favour. I was thinking of a scenario where a potential tenant might sign a lease knowing at the time that they may have to move and break it a few months in for whatever reason. Presumably a landlord is ideally always looking for tenants who will stay long-term, i.e. a few years rather than just 1 year (lease commitment) in the first place when they do viewings? To have a tenant bail out after some months rather than years without real penalty seems a bit backward, regardless of the circumstances...

There is a lot of time involved in picking tenants and letting to them. More than most think. And having to do that again is the biggest pain. Not to mention the costs.
This reassigning leases is a joke. How can anyone take on someone they haven't vetted themselves.

Browney7

I thought long term letting was for schmucks based on the doomsday posts that are always thrown about on this forum?

__..__

Browney7 wrote: »

I thought long term letting was for schmucks based on the doomsday posts that are always thrown about on this forum?

It is. I'm out of it anyway. Know a few others who are too.