My friend lives in North Washington, is on a student visa and signed a one year lease. She wants to look for another apartment as a number of things about the apartment aren’t what she was expecting. She is worried breaking the lease may affect her in some way and wants advice about whether she can just choose to stop paying her rent and leave. I don’t live in the US so can’t really give great advice. Can she just move house without repercussions?
Edit: she lives in Baltimore.
Regarding the expectations, house has a fly problem (they’re everywhere), the other house mates are filthy (refuse to clean shared spaces) and she was initially told that she would be able to move rooms (she didn’t get the room she wanted) in a few months but now has been told she can’t move anymore.
1.) Housemates: that’s not really the landlord’s fault, though. That’s a personal disagreement with her roommates. It’s not that I don’t empathize, but roommates not doing the dishes or picking up their clothing from the floor just isn’t gonna be viewed as a reason she can break a contract with her landlord. If the landlord is fulfilling his/her end of the contract, then that’s pretty much where their legal liability ends in a lot of cases. Your landlord isn’t responsible for mothering your roommates and making them clean the bathroom once a week
2.) Moving rooms: was this in writing, or an informal agreement? Because unless that’s a provision of the lease, that pretty much has no bearing on breaking it.
3.) flies: I’m gonna guess her dirty roommates play more of a hand in that than anything. Some fly tape and a good scrub of the apartment would probably make some good improvements to that problem, but I’m not sure what the landlord is gonna be able to do if her roommates continue to be disgusting.
If the landlord rents the room directly to her they have a responsibility to make sure other tenants keep public spaces livable and clean.
If the other roommates want to be gross, landlord needs to kick them out or allow OP’s friend to move out. That’s part of the duty and risk of renting individual rooms out
Nope. Moving room was a verbal agreement
This may be a weird idea, but hiring a cleaner a few times a month may be cheaper than breaking the lease. See if she can work something out first before throwing away potentially thousands of dollars.
Typically the lease contract will have a specific penalty for breaking a lease (oftentimes 1-2 months rent)
Yeah. It’s 3 months rent. Which is a little steep
Tuition money for the valuable lesson of getting everything that matters in writing.
I’m breaking a lease now to move to Baltimore. I need to move in a hurry. Rent is $3800. Penalty is 2 months rent, plus 60 day notice. If the room is not resigned within 60 days, I pay for those 2 months. So that’s 4 months rent in total. My moving expenses will be around $2000.
$17,200 just to move to a new city.
Lesson is, don’t ever break a lease if you don’t have to.
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Tell her to talk with the landlord. She needs to ask if she can find someone sooner to rent her room or they find someone sooner to rent the room would she be held to the 90 days. I say this after my experience with breaking a lease. One bedroom apartment in DC. Rent was cheap and it was cleaner than when I moved in. I gave them 30 days notice and they were able to find someone to rent it so I only wound up paying for a week while it was being turned over.
She has spoken to the landlord but he’s not budging on the 3 month thing. She has tried to find a replacement but no luck yet
A couple questions: did she co-sign a lease with roommates? Or did she sign an independent lease for a rooming unit? If so; note that there’s very few legally zoned rooming units in Baltimore. It would be worth checking the use and occupancy to verify it’s a legally enforceable lease.
You may need to post the same question on the Washington Reddit page. Their laws many be different than Baltimore's
I notice the roommate situation and wonder: is this a sublet situation? Is the friend even on the actual lease with the landlord? Is subletting permitted on the primary lease? Friend is probably SOL if they are on the primary lease with the landlord. If sublet, there could be some loopholes to exploit.
Not a sublet. She’s actually leased with the landlord
Does she live in North Washington, DC or Mount Washington in Baltimore?
As you may have guessed, my American geography sucks. But she does, indeed, live in Baltimore. I’ll add an edit to the topic
The law of course will vary locally a little bit but here’s a solid set of general legal advice for the US concerning roommates: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/real-estate/landlord-tenant-law/roommates-rights-and-liabilities.html
OP’s friend has a few limited options here:
Find someone else to take over the lease. Finding a replacement roommate to take over the remainder of the lease or start a new one may be an option most landlords would consider and may allow her to leave with no cost.
If the roommates are particularly dirty to the point of causing damage to the domicile above and beyond normal wear and tear, she could report them to the landlord who could evict them, but that’s not likely to happen just because they leave trash around or don’t do dishes. And recourse for the landlord may legally be limited to simply keeping the deposit or fining the tenants when they leave/renew.
Make sure the roommate agreement is actually legal. Is it with the landlord, or a tenant? Is it a legal sublet? (Ie, the people who are renting from the landlord are renting out a room for her but the landlord isn’t aware) if it’s not on the up and up, she might have a little more recourse. This shouldn’t be hard to figure out.
Work with her roommates to tactfully request help/establish chores and responsibilities for common areas so everyone pitches in. Make it easy (or hard to dissent), organized, and inclusive and a lot of people might be more inclined to pitch in. This will take some tact, and may not work, but it may result in a much cleaner place that everyone is happier to live in. You’d be surprised how receptive people can be to assertive leadership in such situations. She probably doesn’t want to have to mother other adults, but such is the situation she’s in.
Best of luck! And remember, it’s just one year.
>Can she just move house without repercussions?
Nope
Can my friend screw over people to save herself money? Maybe, but that’s a shitty thing to do. Property will like come after her for the money as well and take her to court. You sign a contract and that what you’ve agreed to. Pay the money to break the lease or suck it up and live there.
If the problems your friend is having are a) the landlord's responsibility and b) constitute breaches of the lease, then your friend can potentially terminate the lease and move out without penalty. Your friend should talk to her local legal aid org for guidance.
Why are you posting this here if neither you or your friend live in Baltimore?
It’s Baltimore. My bad. North Washington road. Sorry for the confusion
Tell her to read the contract she signed. Before signing would have been better, but read it now. It will say what the penalty for breaking the lease is, usually a few months rent to offset the landlord's cost of turning it over. If she just stops paying and moves, the landlord can come after her for the remaining total cost of the lease she signed, likely through the courts if it comes down to that. Unless the "aren't what she was expecting" conditions are code violations or otherwise things that deprive her of use of her apartment she doesn't have much recourse if it's just buyer's remorse. But if it's negligence on the landlord's part- poor maintenance, etc- then document everything, the city has an escrow process for serious maintenance issues, you can find info online on this; or get a lawyer's advice on pursuing it through small claims court.
Law in Baltimore heavily favors the lessee. I think if your friend explains the situation to the landlord and asks to break the lease they will likely allow your friend to do so but they may have to stay a month or two while the landlord finds another tenant. Security deposit will likely be forfeited.
Just leave, nothing will really happen. The landlord has been ripping your friend off anyway.
pk10534 t1_j1qugge wrote
I would strongly encourage her to not “just choose to stop paying”. Barring unlivable conditions (mold, pest infestation, broken HVAC, etc), it’s kind of hard to just break a contract she willingly signed. Yes, breaking a lease illegally will have negative consequences for her, and I imagine going to court while you’re on a visa is probably not a good look.
Could you go into more detail about it not being “what she expected”? Depending on what she means by that, she might have some options. But realistically, unless it’s something really bad, she’s gonna either have to stay there for the duration of the lease or find 3 months rent to break it. For the same reason that it wouldn’t be fair for her landlord to decide he wanted her apartment back and that she had to leave immediately