How do I break my lease on the house I am renting?

Question

Without going to court, I live in NJ, I rented the place in Nov. 2006 and the landlord is a jackass and has yet to tell me what interest bearing account he has put my $3000 security deposit.

Answer 1

If you break the lease, even for a valid reason stated within your lease, you can kiss your deposit goodbye. But breaking the lease for a valid reason will alleviate any liability for the amount of time still left on your lease. Your landlord may be a jackass, but you are looking to breach a contract and a security deposit is essentially for this very reason.

Often leases can be broken if your job transfers you or if you are in the military and get sent to a war. Ultimately your outs would be stated in the lease. Now if you have no valid outs, you might be able to work something out with the landlord using your diplomacy skills. He might very well have someone waiting for one of his apartments this month.

Answer 2

Well, that's not entirely true. Maybe in some places in Calif (like where you live) but where I live in Calif, a landlord indeed must have any deposit a tenants forks over in an interest-bearing account and must pay the tenant a certain percent each full year the tenant has that lease (the percent is determined by the Rent Board for each year, as is the percent rents may be raised each year by the landlord). See if your area has some sort of tenant union or tenant advice group, see if your city government has a website with a section just for tenants/landlords. If you know of anyone else who owns property and rents to tenants, you might want to ask him/her what the laws are and what recourse you have. Around here, if you can break a lease you lose your deposit--nothing more serious than that (of course, what you put down in deposit is probably a pretty good chunk of money, but sometimes it's worth it to just forego the return of the deposit to get away from a bad situation).

Answer 3

Read the terms of your lease to find out under what circumstances or how much notice is required to break your lease, if it is allowed at all.

NJ may be different, but in CA, you do not get interest on your security deposit, and the landlord does not either. The security deposit is required to be held in a trust account, separate from the regular income and expense account.

Answer 4

Write him a letter stating that you want to know the detailed information about the account and any interest accrued in 2006 (it won't be too much money since you moved in in November) must be either credited to you as a payment or deducted from your rent. Notify the landlord that if he/she fails to do both of these things, you are legally able to use your security deposit toward your rent payments. Since they want to have that security money available for when you vacate the premises, they will probably act on your request pretty quickly.

Answer 5

I guarantee you your deposit is not in any account. I have never ever heard of anyone in any state getting their deposit back, especially from a private owner. First try and make up some story, like you are being transfered or whatever. If he agrees, GET IT IN WRITING. Then live out the deposit. You will never see that money if you don't. If you don't want to do that then make sure on the day you move out, you video tape the whole apt.. Make sure the date shows up, because I promise you will not see that money. T hat way when you have to take him to court you have proof that you didn't damage anything. Either way, make sure you video tape it. I broke my lease with a verbal agreement. I was sued for 5,000.00 I had no proof of how I left the place because I trusted this ***. I also paid my last months rent. He won!!! You have to look out for yourself.