How to Break a Lease for Your Property the Easy and Right Way

If you are a landlord, learning how to break a lease is crucial if you want to find an effective way to end your rental agreement. Find out how to break a lease easily and legally right now no matter what sticky situation you are stuck in.

How to End Your Week-to-Week or Month-to-Month Tenancy

If you have a week-to-week or month-to-month lease, then you have a periodic tenancy. That's actually good news because you can end a periodic tenancy quite easily and quickly.

To end your periodic lease, you just have to hand your tenant a written notice to quit informing them that you intend to terminate their lease.

This note usually has to be given to your tenants 30 days in advance for most countries. However in some cases you have to pass them the notice 60 days beforehand. This is more commonly required for tenants on subsidized housing or if they had been living on your rental property for more than 1 year.

How to Break a Lease for Your Fixed Term Tenancy Before it Expires

As you can probably tell from the name, a fixed term tenancy is more binding and harder to terminate when compared to a periodic tenancy. If your tenant does not mutually agree to end the lease and your rental agreement does not contain a statement that allows you to end your lease prematurely, you are not allowed to do it.

In this case, you can only end your tenancy if you have a valid reason for evicting your tenants. The most common and important reasons for evicting your tenant include non-payment of rent and violation of the rental agreement rules.

When it comes to evicting tenants, the first step is hand your tenants a written tenant eviction notice. This note will give your tenant a last chance to pay up his rent or fix up any mess within a short time limit. This time limit can vary from 3 to 14 days depending your local landlord tenant law.

If your tenant chooses to ignore your eviction notice, you can then go ahead and file an unlawful detainer action against your tenant. This will officially begin your legal lawsuit and a court hearing will be arranged for your case. After winning your eviction lawsuit, you will be granted a court order to remove your tenants.

How to Break a Lease if Both You and Your Tenant Agree to it

If you are learning how to break a lease where both parties want to end the tenancy, then you are in luck. This process is called surrender of tenancy and it's by far the easiest and quickest way of ending a lease.

The first way to carry out a surrender of tenancy does not even involve paperwork. Your tenants simply just leave your rental property while you look for new tenants to replace them.

However, it's always recommended that you end your rental agreement with a written note signed by both parties. By sealing the surrender on paper, you can avoid any potential problems in case your tenant goes back on his word.

The other good thing about a surrender of tenancy is that you usually won't have to go through a waiting period - As long as your tenant agrees to it, your lease can end on any date that you want.

Teo Zhenjie has been showing landlords how to manage their tenants and rental properties effectively on Propertydo Landlord Guides. Visit his website for step-by-step real estate guides, free resources and forms.