Breaking A Sublease Agreement

[megan615]

I currently reside in New York City and am looking to break my sublease agreement. We gave our landlord over 2 months notice on our move out and he will not work with us on paying. We told him to keep our security deposit and we would help find someone to replace us. He 1st said ok so we stared looking and got 4 contacts in a day so thought we were fine but then he said he didn't want to rent, he wanted to sell the place but not until our lease was up. Our sublease agreement says nothing about what happens if we decide to break our lease, it says to refer to an overlease which doesn't exist. Is there anything we can do to get out of our lease without paying the additioanl month we are leaving. I don't think it is fair to pay both months and then him be able to see it. He can sell it right after we move out and make $4400 off us from what we would owe him. I just dont' want to get ripped off and I think he is being very unfair. Please let me know if you have any advice.

[aaron]

If you can establish that the landlord could have mitigated damages by bringing in a new subtenant, and did not do so, that may provide a partial defense for your breaking the lease.

[GreatGadsby]

shouldn't the overlease be he lease agreement between rental company (or building owner or whatnot) and tenant #1? if you're subleaseing, then you would dealing with tenant #1 as your landlord.

[aaron]

Sometimes the landlord arranges the sublease, and collects any differential from the original tenant. But you are correct that, where the contract for the sublease is exclusively between the tenant and the subtenant, the landlord would go after the original tenant for the rent, not the subtenant.