My roommate and I are both jointly liable for the rent of our apartment. With 8 months remaining in our lease, she decided to leave.
She did not find anyone to assign her lease to, though my landlord gave her permission to do so.
I listed her room for rent at the rate she was paying, but had no responses since the market has declined dramatically since we initially signed out lease 16 months ago.
I reduced the rental amount for her room to an amount closer to what other rooms were renting for in the area in an effort to get someone to rent her room and mitigate my damages. I did get a person to rent her room for $100 less than what my roommate was originally paying in rent.
I will be taking her to small claims court to recover the $100 I'm stuck paying each month until the end of our lease.
My questions are:
1. Can I sue her for the full $800 ($100x8 months = total amount she'll owe me) prior to incurring the entire debt, or must I wait until I've actually paid it? Does it matter that I will have an agreement from the new tenant agreeing to pay the lower rent until the lease is over?
2. What sort of agreement should I create with this new tenant? Ordinally my landlord wanted to swap out the new person's name for my old roommate (if the person agreed to rent it for the full amount). Since that's not the case now, I'm thinking that my ex-roommate's name needs to stay on the lease so that she still has a legal obligation to pay rent and I can recover the amount I'm out. Should I just create a sublease between the new tenant, myself and the landlords?
3. If her name remains on the lease so that I can sue her for monies owed, does my ex-roommate have any right to find a roommate willing to pay her original monthly rent after the subtenant has moved in? I'm assuming that she might continue to look for a roommate willing to pay the full rental amount so that she would no longer owe me the $100 a month. I'm doubtful that this will be successful as I never received any response to my ads for a roommate at the original rental amount. I just want to make sure that there's some protection for the new tenant.
Thank you.
She did not find anyone to assign her lease to, though my landlord gave her permission to do so.
I listed her room for rent at the rate she was paying, but had no responses since the market has declined dramatically since we initially signed out lease 16 months ago.
I reduced the rental amount for her room to an amount closer to what other rooms were renting for in the area in an effort to get someone to rent her room and mitigate my damages. I did get a person to rent her room for $100 less than what my roommate was originally paying in rent.
I will be taking her to small claims court to recover the $100 I'm stuck paying each month until the end of our lease.
My questions are:
1. Can I sue her for the full $800 ($100x8 months = total amount she'll owe me) prior to incurring the entire debt, or must I wait until I've actually paid it? Does it matter that I will have an agreement from the new tenant agreeing to pay the lower rent until the lease is over?
2. What sort of agreement should I create with this new tenant? Ordinally my landlord wanted to swap out the new person's name for my old roommate (if the person agreed to rent it for the full amount). Since that's not the case now, I'm thinking that my ex-roommate's name needs to stay on the lease so that she still has a legal obligation to pay rent and I can recover the amount I'm out. Should I just create a sublease between the new tenant, myself and the landlords?
3. If her name remains on the lease so that I can sue her for monies owed, does my ex-roommate have any right to find a roommate willing to pay her original monthly rent after the subtenant has moved in? I'm assuming that she might continue to look for a roommate willing to pay the full rental amount so that she would no longer owe me the $100 a month. I'm doubtful that this will be successful as I never received any response to my ads for a roommate at the original rental amount. I just want to make sure that there's some protection for the new tenant.
Thank you.
