Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in California
Rental security deposit
If a tenant signs a 12 month lease on an apartment and decides to move out 4 months before the lease is up, does the tenant receive his/her security deposit back? If the same tenant has a friend sign a sublease to continue the original 12 months lease, is the deposit returned to the tenant moving out or forfeited due to original 12 month lease broken?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Rental security deposit
You have entered into an agreement to rent the premises for one year; if you move out early, the landlord has a duty to mitigate damages by trying to re-rent the unit as soon as reasonably possible. So the landlord is allowed to keep all payments made by you that would cover that time period. If you gilve the landlord 2 months notice, he probably would not be able to keep any of the security deposit. if you move out the day you give him notice, you should not get any of the deposit back if it equals no more than one months's rent.
The landlord is not required to automatically accept as a new tenant someone you find to replace you as that person might be irresponsible; but in most cases the landlord can not arbitrarily reject the person you find. But that person must put up a security deposit, before your security deposit would have to be released.