Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California
Hi, I had a Tenant who signed a year lease but moved out a month after signing. She said she lost her job and couldn't afford the rent anymore so she left right away. She paid her 1st month rent and security deposit so I kept the deposit. I tried to find a Tenant to replace her but I couldn't and I was getting really behind on the mortgage so my husband and I moved back to the house and filed for BK because of all of this. We were renting our home out because my husband lost his jib and we couldn't afford paying it anymore and we were living with his parents. Do I have any legal right to sue for the remainder of the rent that wasn't paid for?
2 Answers from Attorneys
Your measure of damages for a residential lease does not include collecting all of the remaining rent due under the lease from the tenant. You can collect only any unpaid, past-due rent. You may also collect, as a result of a breach of a term lease, any future rent due but not paid from the period when she moved out, to when the property was relet. If you moved in, that is probably the date on which you can no longer collect future rents, but there are many more facts that would have to be reviewed to provide you with a solid answer.
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Mr. Gibbs is roughly correct. You can only collect unpaid rent for breach of a lease for as long as you are taking commercially reasonable steps to re-rent the property. So the date you moved in would be the very latest cut off. If you stoppped trying to rent it sooner, then when you did that, the right to rent would end.
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