Breaking your lease...

This is a 'memoir' I wrote last year to remind me of a mistake I needed to remember to learn from! It's all about legal mumbo-jumbo and never never never take someones word when it comes to contracts. Sign on the dotted line, and write everything down!!!

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I've been renting since I was 18 years old, and have never come across a problem such as this. Now at age 33, you'd think I'd have this figured out by now.

SIMPLY PUT
Whenever you are in any sort of business transaction, make sure any verbal agreements are written down and signed.

Here's my story. If they keep this post on here, I'll update it as time goes on so hopefully others can learn from my mistake.

My wife and I were married over 2 years ago. Both of us have rented apartments and houses our whole life. When we first decided it was time to get engaged, we did like all couples do and discuss our future in buying a house someday. At the time, she lived in an apartment complex in Overland Park and I was renting a house in the Kansas City area. We planned that it would be best that once we were married, I would move in with her in Overland Park since her place was bigger and would hold both of us, my children as well as her children comfortably. (Yes, we are a family of six.) We both agreed that we would do this temporarily and move within the next few years to a house of our own.

We were married in June of 2005 and have been loving it ever since.

When it came time for me to move in with my wife, we visited the management of her apartment complex to sign my name to the lease. It's a yearly lease with no provisions of early cancellation unless you are relocating with your job. Being that it made no mention of early cancellation due to a house purchase, we asked the manager of the complex if they made any provisions for cancellation of a lease if we were to buy a house. We explained that we were newly married, and that we would want to stay here with the option of breaking our lease if we found a home to purchase. The manager of the complex explained that it would only require us to perform the simple task of giving two months written notice and that it wouldn't be any problem whatsoever.

My wife's original lease expired in April of 2006. Ten months went by, and we were still not ready to buy a house, but we were feeling that our current apartment was a bit tighter than we had though it would be with us and our children. We asked the manager if they had a town-home available that would fit us better. It just so happened that a larger town-home came available around the same time so we signed another yearly lease with the same provisions as the last. Up to this point, we were still discussing and fixing our financial situation to prepare our selves for a home purchase.

Mounting problems with security and localized crime in our specific area had persuaded the both of us we should move soon. But another year had come and gone, and we still weren't quite ready to purchase a house, but we knew we were close. We received notice early February of 2007 that our rent would be increasing for 2007 if we were to choose to stay. This notice included a new lease for us to sign. My wife and I both read through the short 2 and a half page lease agreement, and noticed that it still had the same provisions as all the earlier leases we signed. I felt that since we were close, but not quite close enough to get a house by April of that year, that I would discuss with the management once more about us moving and breaking the lease if we were to purchase a home. I walked in the management office with signed lease in hand, and had the same conversation with the Apartment manager as before. She explained with a "nice big smile" that we wouldn't have any problem breaking the lease so long as we gave two months notice and cleaned the property appropriately before moving. I thanked her for her time and handed over the new yearly lease for 2007.

Now that I am where I am now, I wish I had written that verbal agreement down, or had a tape recording of our conversation. That is the exact point my problem spawned and here is where it gets interesting.

As I mentioned earlier about our growing concerns for our safety, and most of all our children's safety, and being that we finally had our financial concerns under control, we both started house hunting like crazy. It was exciting to think that someday soon, one of these houses would be our own. It was a breath of fresh air to know that we would be away from the growing crime that our little area has been seeing lately. I understand that rental complexes have their fair share of "over the norm crime", but it had come awfully close to "home" lately. I can't say that I ever felt that we were in immediate danger otherwise I wouldn't have thought twice about moving immediately. But I must say our complex has had it's fair share of news coverage lately and with a recent personal experience here, we were ready to take the plunge!

With our understanding of what the apartment manager had previously told us several times before regarding a house purchase and early termination of the lease, we put an offer on the house of our dreams. There is so much to do, and so little I understood of the house buying process. My mortgage lender explained that they would need to contact our current apartment manager to get a rental payment history. They said I should contact the manager before they do to let them know we are moving. That way it wouldn't be that big of a surprise to the manager. I happily obliged and proceeded to call the manager immediately after. Here is the exact transcript of our conversation. I remember it like it was yesterday, and I will probably never forget it. (Ive replaced the managers name with "Dorthy", and my name as "Fred" to keep this anonymous)

ring... ring... ring...

Manager: "Hello, [name of complex apartments] can I help you?"

Me: "Yes, Dorthy, this is Fred from [address of our town-home]."

Manager: " Yes, Fred, how are you doing?"

Me: "Fine, thanks. I was just giving you a heads up that I believe we found a place to purchase, and the lender wanted to contact you for our rental history."

Manager: "OH, well you... pause I hear her typing on the computer ... your lease isn't up until April of 2008! You can't do that or you will be breaking your lease."

Me: "Well I'm still going to give you our two months notice as we discussed."

Manager: "I remember that, but I also told you that you would need to sign an addendum in order to do that."

Me: "I don't remember that, but can I come over and sign that now?"

Manager: "No, I told you that you would need to sign it when you renewed your lease, and you must have forgot because I don't have an addendum from you."

Me: "Dorthy, that's a big fat lie! You never told me..."

Manager: ...she interrupted me... "Now wait a minute, I've been doing this for 22 years and know how to do my job! And I know I didn't forget to tell you that! If you break your lease early, you will be responsible up until April of 2008 for rental payments."

Me: "I know that's not true. Will you still discuss my rental history with the lender?"

Manager: "OH why of course. I always do that for people. I don't have a problem doing that."

Me: Click


The first thing I was thinking about when I hung up the phone was that Dorthy had 22 years of deceptive practices behind her. She's a pro, and she is going to be trouble!

She must have been honest with my lender, because they came back saying everything looked squeaky clean. That much I'm thankful for.

So my wife and I are in a nervous twit now. We thought long and hard, and after the bomb Dorthy laid down, we decided we would take our chances and follow through with the home purchase. This gave us even more reason to leave and not help support a company that uses deceptive lying practices to keep tenants in place.

Once the seller of our house accepted our offer, my wife and I were both excited and scared. Now we had to follow through and send our apartment manger our notice. We sent the notice three days ago (August 21st.) certified mail, and guess what showed up in our mailbox today? A letter from a Law-Firm in Lenexa Kansas. They are representing the Apartment Complex because they were made aware of our intent to break the lease. I will be honest. I cited safety as the reason for us breaking our lease. It was the honest truth. Three weeks ago, I filed a police report as we had a case of destruction of property and arson on the property of the complex. Although the attorney stated that the management of the complex keeps close ties with local law-enforcement and that they haven't been made aware of any report filed by me. They explained I should contact the apartment management immediately with a case/report number of the incident.

Well they must not keep that close of contact because it's out there, and the detective contacted me earlier this week to let me know it's going to court.

The attorney was long and drawn out explaining that the manager knew we were moving, and that we were made aware of an addendum that we were supposed to sign at the beginning of our lease. But we choose not to sign it, so therefore we are liable for the apartment until April of 2008. The attorney also went on to explain all the charges we are liable for, and that they really hope we think twice about breaking the lease.

Side note: Why must you sign the addendum at the time of lease signing? If you don't know when you are going to purchase a house in the first place, I don't see why you must sign it at lease signing time. They should make that addendum part of the lease in that case. Hmmmmm....

I know this is "mostly" a scare tactic, as the Kansas Tenant laws explains that as soon as the rental manager is made aware of our intent to vacate, they must use every reasonable effort to bring the property up to par to sell to another tenant in the most timely manner allowed.

I'll admit. The scare tactic worked. I called around to several different local Tenant Law attorneys in the area, and they said they couldn't help me because they have represented this complex in the past. Luckily, my Dad has a attorney friend that he asked me to call. I contacted him and explained the situation. He said he would take a look at the lease, letter as well as my statement and tell me what my options are. His first impression is that she doesn't have a leg to stand on. But I'm a pessimist. It's my word against hers. I hope he has something to come back with, even if it's to get her for lying.

Well. So here I am. I have a house under contract, and a lease that I can't break. Quite the pickle I got myself into this time.

I'm not certain why people act the way they do, and feel that they must lie in order to make a business work. I was very frustrated. Almost to the point of calling the house off. But after a lot of praying, my wife and I have decided to see this on through. We are going to keep the contact on the house, and only hope that it closes successfully towards the end of September.

I'll keep this post updated as my situation progresses (or regresses) as the case may be. My only hope of writing this long draw-out experience is that maybe someone else may be thinking of cutting the lease short in order to buy a house, relocate a job, or something similar, that they will make certain they are agreeable with what the lease states, and anything verbal you agree on with the landlord is written down and signed.

Wish me luck! Oh, and yeah... if anyone has any advice they want to give this sucker, I'm open to suggestions!


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Well... since then the attorney was able to bail us out. It cost us $400 and a bunch of pain and aggravation. I was really surprised to see that our ex landlord even returned our security deposit a few months later. Hopefully someone will learn from my mistake.