college type apartment lease question

[daman123]

hello,

i'm actually a college grad who now works, but i live in a neighborhood with many college kids so i figure i would post this here.

i had been living at home for a year after i graduated and decided that i wanted to move out of my parents' house (only 15 mins away but out of the suburbs and into the city). i signed a year lease starting in june for this apartment i currently live in with an unknown college student that i found on craigslist. i then met him and he seemed good enough to live with so i signed the lease.

well, i graduated from college but i'm still young and dumb because two months later, i don't really want to live here anymore. i want to move to new york where i know a lot more people. if i could get out of my lease somehow, my parents would have no problem with me moving back in until i could figure out a good situation for me to move down there.

the place i'm at now is not a bad place for a college student, certainly better than the place i lived in when i was in school. my roommate is a nice and quiet guy who's out of town frequently and the landlord seems reasonable. the room i live in is fairly nice and very spacious for a low rent apartment. the bathroom and kitchen are a bit dirty, but could easily be cleaned in an afternoon if one were so inclined. it's within walking distance to a number of campuses and the main "downtown" area of the small town.

my thoughts are to go on craigslist and post my situation. it's now almost august, but i'm hoping i could find some student to transfer the lease to starting in september when the fall semester starts. if they needed to move in before that, i would be fine with paying the rent for august and letting them move in a little early.

so suppose i can find someone who would like to stay here, is this legal? or perhaps a better question is is it just bad etiquette for me to call up the landlord and ask him to transfer the remaining 9 months of the lease to someone else. i'm not really looking to screw the landlord here because i have signed the lease for 12 months so i can't just bail. although i'm not familiar with the situation, it seemed like my current roommate had someone lined up to take over this lease in june, that person bailed, and my roommate had to scramble to find another roommate (me), but i don't konw the full details of this story.

i suppose if worse comes to worst and i have to pay the rest of the 9-10 months of rent, it won't be too bad considering neteller is going to start to pay me 10k+ tomorrow and i'm only paying $500/mo, but i don't want to just throw away money obviously.

i know i'm dumb for doing this, but these things happen i suppose. if you have similar stories or suggestions and tips for me, i would really appreciate it. thanks.

[Dave D]

Your lease probably has a provision against subleasing, I don't know, check.

Generally the rule is if you give 30 days notice, you can move out, the landlord has a duty to find someone else. If they cant, they get to sue you for the rent you owe, but only as it becomes due (so they cant sue ahead of time, they have to show that they tried to rent it for x amount of time and failed). The statute about how much notice the landlord needs varies by state, the standard rule we learned in law school is 30 days, but in MA it's 60 days, so whatever.

Practically, the best thing to do would be to find someone else, then go to the roommate and say you want this new guy in, if he's cool, go to the landlord and say I have someone new. Basically, the landlord really only cares about getting his rent, and making sure you don't trash the place.

My roommate first semester wanted to move back with her parents to save money, I got a new one off CL (and he's awesome, better than the old one, though the old one just didn't talk much) and everything went fine. Hope it all works out. You really should be able to end up not paying much more rent.