Breaking rent lease advise

[Guest therevills]

Hi All,

 

We are in the process of buying a house and we are currently renting with a fixed-term lease.

 

Our settlement date for the house is the 27/11/09 and we are sending the estate agent an official letter telling them that we are going to break our lease on that day.

 

We rang the estate agent up yesterday and told them our plans, we asked whats the best way of going about getting the keys back to them, they told us that we keep the keys until a new tenant is found in case we have to do any cleaning after we move out.... whats with that!?!?

 

Also does anyone the costs we will be up for, for doing this? Any advise would be great!

 

Thanks!

[Guest JulieG]

Hi All,

 

We are in the process of buying a house and we are currently renting with a fixed-term lease.

 

Our settlement date for the house is the 27/11/09 and we are sending the estate agent an official letter telling them that we are going to break our lease on that day.

 

We rang the estate agent up yesterday and told them our plans, we asked whats the best way of going about getting the keys back to them, they told us that we keep the keys until a new tenant is found in case we have to do any cleaning after we move out.... whats with that!?!?

 

Also does anyone the costs we will be up for, for doing this? Any advise would be great!

 

Thanks!

 

 

Hi

 

Don't quote me but I think if you leave before your lease has finished you have to pay the costs of re-advertising etc.

[Guest LOOBYLOO]

We broke the lease on our rental and were liable for advertising costs and weekly rent until new tenants were found. There was a final inspection before we handed back keys and got our bond back.

[Guest nikki & john]

Hiya

 

If you break your lease on a fixed term lease, you're liable to continue paying the rent until the agent finds a new tenant that they are happy with. In addition you are liable for the advertising costs and lease break fees. There is a formula that agents have to use (pretty sure you can get this off the OCBA website) but from memory it goes something like - weeks left of tenancy term divided by three quarters of the total lease term times the lease break fee which is usually the equivelent of two weeks rent. The same formula is used for working out advertising costs just substitute the two weeks rent with the cost of the ad placed. I'm pretty sure this can differ depending on whether you are still resident or have actually vacated the property though but I might be wrong.

 

The reason they ask you to hold onto the keys is that they usually will not carry out the final inspection of the property until the new tenant has been confirmed and they check the property after that because it could have been sitting empty for some time in a lease break situation. Hope this helps.

 

Nikki

[Guest Here at last!]

Hi

 

We broke the lease on our previous property. We gave the agent 4 weeks notice of our intention to break the lease and he advertised it immediately and the new tenant moved in the day we moved out so we were lucky that we didn't have to pay to break the lease.

 

The agent did inform us that if we were to do the "wrong thing" and leave after the 4 weeks without a new tenant then the only cost they would charge would be the bond as the governing body of real estate deems 4 weeks enough notice for the agent to find a new tenant. How true this is I don't know but that is what he said.

 

Sonya

[Guest steph&neil]

Hiya maybe if you let people on here know where the rental is then look for someone to take the lease over? that way you could avoid advertising fees & most agents are just as happy to get new tennants without the leg work, I know when I asked our agent (Phil McMachon) they said it would be fine to do that, check with your agent first though just to be sure! hope this helps steph