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Comment by coding123 | Hacker News Reader

All states should operate like Oregon that stipulates the maximum lease break fee of 1.5 months. I think that's totally fair considering it's been a landlords market for the past 20 years. There's no reason in any state to keep someone on the hook for potentially 12 months when that landlord can just tell someone "hey we're still advertising it but we haven't found anyone yet". By the way, if any of you find yourself in that position, have your parents email them and ask for a unit - if they say they have none and are keeping you on the hook, you may be entitled to 2 months rent back in court.

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In Germany, the tenant usually has a 3 month termination notice requirement.

The landlord just CANT terminate the lease, ever. (Unless he is going to live in the place herself or the tenant stopped paying. And even then, it takes a long time to get a tenant out.

It works just fine.

> Unless he is going to live in the place herself

Can just lie. My last landlord said he was moving back in because of family circumstances. As soon as he kicked me out he renovated it and put it up for sale.

Didn’t get an offer he was happy with and was asking me if I wanted to move back in 12 months later.

Happened to my mom too and a friend of mine.

Tenant said "he moves back, of family"

But that never happened, just rented out to the next person for a higher rent.

"Works just fine" not actually. That's one of the reasons you see a lot of places going into airbnb (where they get paid more).

I'll give you it works better than some other places because the rights are balanced.

But 3 month termination notices are just an anachronism. German "bureaucracy" still think contracts are forever when they're getting shorter with time.

Yes, I'm giving you the 3 months notice when you could terminate the lease, let's say, with 1 month then have a queue of 10 people ready to rent it again (were you not petty)

Most landlords are fine with the tenant leaving early, if he provides a follow-up tenant. OP is really describing a non-issue in a landlords market.

Oh man, don't get me started. The 3 _calendar_ month notice that needs to be sent in writing (or faxed) is so ridiculous and I wonder if it is done to make it more difficult to get out of contracts. In my case, I had no idea that the written notice receive date matters (unlike the US, where you typically use the postmark date), due to mail delay because of a holiday my notice arrived 2 days late and that was enough to make them pay for another month despite there being an incredible amount of demand in Berlin for apartments.

> unlike the US, where you typically use the postmark date)

I'd wager that it's really up to you to familiarize yourself with local laws and customs.

As with most things: it’s complicated.

When you sign a lease agreement, you get a guarantee that your rent will not go up during the term of that agreement.

So, if you sign a lease for $1000 a month on Monday, and on Tuesday the market rent for that area spikes to $10,000 a month, you’re locked in with a lower rate.

If I were a landlord in Oregon, given the above law, I would just only rent month to month. Breaking a lease becomes easy, but you also lose the pricing guarantee.

That doesn't make any sense, the Oregon law works very well for the landlord in that case. Tenant is locked in at $1000/mo. 6 months in, decides they want to move. Tenant pays $1500 to break lease, and landlord can charge $10000/mo immediately to the next tenant.

Yes, but the point is that the tenant doesn’t want to break the lease then, but the landlord does. 12 month leases protect the tenant from rent hikes as much as they protect the landlord from losing a tenant. If legislating easy breaking of the leases results in removing landlord protection, the landlords will stop offering 12 month leases as they confer no benefit to them, and will only offer month to month lease. Then, you’ll be able to break lease easily too, but so will the landlord be able to kick you out on the month notice.

In the UK, all leases are legally for at least 6 months; 12 months obviously is common.

So you could combine that with Oregon law. Or use the German system someone mentioned.

Basically anything but the unfettered free market is going for home tenancy, given the obvious and large power imbalance between renters and landlords.

Why on earth would the tenant spend $1500 to break their lease, just so they can go find a new place for $10000/month?

They’ve bought a house, moving out of state, moving in with their boyfriend, lost their job and moving in with their parents, been convicted and going to jail, etc, etc.

Except 99% of people wont accept month to month due to the instability.

Another option is for landlords to price the additional risk into the rent itself.

But there’s no way you’re going to add risk into the market without that having some effect on pricing.

Which is why, if there's any possibility of a sudden 10x price hike, the rents will start going crazy in advance. Because rent prices don't hike like that unless there's some disaster event, the existing system works well.

Housing is a policy area with a lot of unintended consequences. I honestly don't know how I feel about the Oregon law.

Yes playing with regulations might help some renters to the detriment of others, but on average landlords will probably make the same.

where does rent spike to $10,000 a month?

palo alto

In Seattle (a couple years ago at this point) the highest lease break fee I saw was 1/2 month which already seemed quite high to me. 1.5x seems crazy.

2 months + concession claw-back is pretty standard on Seattle Eastside now and was couple years ago.

I believe my lease is 3 months + concessions. It's definitely at least 2 months + concessions. This is in downtown Seattle.

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