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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I own property. I’ve evicted people, sadly. Exactly zero landlords anywhere would prefer that they’re forced to go through this entire eviction process vs. the tenant just disappearing one day and you never seeing a dime of what they owe. Eviction is expensive, stressful, and time-consuming. And even though I own rental property, I’m a human being and don’t like putting anyone in a bad position.

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^ exactly this - evictions can be very stressful and overall very expensive. Although most contracts are written such that they make it seem that the landlord will go after you should you need to get out of a lease early - most smaller landlords would rather you part willingly as soon as possible and would rather turn the property around as quickly as possible without having to go through the eviction process.

I have seriously considered just paying bad tenants to leave. It’d be faster and cheaper. The problem is one of adverse selection though: don’t want a reputation as the landlord who pays bad tenants!

Fine, then why don't you write your leases in a way that reflects your preferences? Instead of saying that if they break the lease early, that they owe you 3 months rent, say that as long as they give you 30 days notice, and the apartment is clean and empty on the 1st, you call it even.

That's called a month to month agreement, they are widely available.

This would be the equivalent of a month to month lease, and many landlords will be open to that, although for a slightly higher price as they have to account for a potentially higher turnover. Additionally, many lease contracts have early termination clauses that leave a door way open to early termination by agreement of both parties, thus as long as the tenant and landlord are willing to work out something, what you suggest above is clearly attainable, and much preferred over an eviction - it just requires a conversation between the two parties. Now if either of the parties is unreasonable of course or unwilling to even entertain a conversation, no sort of contract will help.

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