Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: how to break a lease.

"Break a lease" is usually informal language for "breach a contract." There may be circumstances in which a lease can be cancelled, ignored, etc. without any bad consequences for the tenant, but your "personal reason" is probably not going to be one of them. For example, a job transfer to another city is not a good reason, but a transfer or call-up of an active-duty military person would be, under Federal law.

If you found out that the unit you're leasing is illegal, there's a reasonable chance your lease would be considered an illegal contract and a court would not enforce it against you. Still, you could be sued and have to defend, or you might be reported to a credit bureau (improperly).

One legal concept that works in your favor is that the landlord cannot win damages from you in excess of what his/her/its damages would have been if mitigation measures were taken, usually in the form of the landlord making a good-faith effort to re-rent the place. Thus, instead of being liable for a full eight months rent, you might only be stuck with a few weeks' rent, some advertising and cleaning expense, and not much more. Obviously, the results of mitigation efforts are unpredictable and depend on the market, pricing, etc.

Therefore, it may be a good idea to inform the landlord immediately of your intent to split early so that mitigation (re-renting) activity can begin at the earliest possible time, thus minimizing the length of any vacancy and cutting the landlord's losses that can be claimed in the likely small-claims action.