Hacker News Reader

Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Good thing I signed right before the rent drop and can't break my lease

I moved into a new downtown apartment in a major midwestern city back in April thinking this would be over by May. Now I'm stuck in a dystopian downtown. My lease is up in April though. I'm looking forward to putting everything in a POD and heading back to where I grew up in small town America. Hopefully it will help all cities go back to reasonable prices, for people who still want to live there.

I did the same! I likely could have extended my lease to monthly and negotiated an even better deal had I known how long this would last. I saw so many people in my building moving out, and a lot of the rooms in my floor are still empty 7-8 months later.

Madison?

State St. (the only real 4 blocks of downtown Madison has) still has a ton of boards up from the BLM protests, and last I heard the count for closed stores this year was almost 40.

Worse: Chicago.

Ouch. If you can put up with the winters, Madison is quite a bit nicer than Chicago, even in it's current state. But, it's not really a city. Aside from 3 blocks around the capitol, there's basically no density and you're driving a minimum of 10 minutes to get to anything worthwhile.

I grew up here, but I personally hate winter and can't wait to get out of this entire region.

I've only been up that way to see The House on the Rock. I can't stand the winters though, or Mayor Lightfoot's disastrous policies. I'm definitely moving down south.

If you’re in CA, you can probably break the lease if you really want to. You might be able to negotiate a rent reduction at least to save you both some hassle.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tenants-right-break-...

I can imagine the unit remaining empty for months and then re-renting for $600-$1000 less.

I would be on the hook for the empty months as well as the difference between the current rent I'm paying and the rent the new tenant is paying.

So, no, I can't really just "break the lease" and I can't imagine why they would reduce my rent.

How does it work with the eviction moratorium now? I mean, what would happen if you just stopped paying rent?

I suppose worst case the landlord would get a judgement for the rent, which they’d have a very hard time collecting on. Civil judgements don’t affect credit scores anymore.

look for vacant units in your building (if you're in an apartment) and see if you can negotiate a lower rate with your landlord based on the price of the units that are currently up for rent. if you're not in an apartment, you might be able to do the same thing with houses in your area

What incentive do they have to negotiate? I haven't heard of anyone doing this. (also there are no empty units in my apartment)

You could incentivize them by offering to extend your lease early, if you can lock in a lower rent.

You should at least try to lower your rent. The worst thing that can happen is your rent doesn't change. You might get a discount, which you certainly won't get if you don't ask.

Unfortunately, I can't do that because I will be moving for a new job when the lease is up. Agree that its worth an ask, but don't think it's particularly likely anything will come of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com