Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: prorate and early lease termination

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "prorate," but I assume you mean the full-term rent. The answer is that, to a point, you are only entitled to whatever relief you can negotiate.

However, if you simply breached your lease without agreement, the landlord's damages would be limited to what his actual losses would be with a bona fide attempt to mitigate the damages. In other words, a lanlord cannot simple let a place sit empty without trying to find a new tenant.

Therefore, the landlord is not necessarily entitled to every penny of the total rent for the term of the lease, only what he would have lost up to the point he could have re-rented. The landlord is also entitled to his costs of re-renting such as advertising expense, and to recover any rent reduction he suffers because of market conditions.

So, the bottom line is that if you are leaving, say 2 weeks early, you probably aren't entitled to rent relief, but if you are leaving six months before the lease was due to end, I'd think a mitigation program should produce a new tenant in that time, so in a negotiated early lease termination you should be charged for way less than the remaining six months.