Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Virginia

No. Technically, it is almost impossible to get out of a lease. However, the one good thing is that if the landlord finds a replacement renter, he can only collect from ONE renter for the same property. And he MUST search for a replacmenet renter to "mitigate damages" (reduce the losses, if possible.)

However, the landlord CAN make you pay for any costs of advertisign for a replacement renter, etc., etc., and for any time that the property is empty (not being paid for). He must TRY to find another renter.

Whether there was damage or the property needed to be cleaned is alsways very difficult to say.

Very often, a renter will clean the property, but not good enough to rent it to another person.

So the renter may clean, but it still needs to be cleaned more than that.

And the judge will say "How do I know?" Sitting there in teh courtroom months later, the judge has no way of knowing.

SO you would want to bring in your bills and receipts or cancelled checks and show that this work was already done, and did not need to be done again.

The judge might believe that your cleaning was enough. He might not. He might think that more cleaning was still needed anyway.

However, the judge will probably NOT believe that the bathrooom needed to be painted twice.

He will probably NOT believe that the carpet needed to be steam-cleaned twice.

The best situation for you would be if you could bring to court the painter to testify and the cleaner to testify.

They could not only stestify that they did the work already, but they could also so that when they left the property was in good condition and did not need any more work.

But most peopel are afraid of court and they might charge you for their time.