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What leaving early costs, priced two ways. Enter the rent, the months left on the lease, the fee the lease quotes and what it takes to re-let the unit. This lease break cost calculator prices the buyout against the rent-until-re-let path side by side, and prints which one is cheaper and by how much — no sign-up, nothing to install.
Leaving 7 months early — rent until the unit re-lets
$2,775.00 of rent while empty + $650.00 to re-let, $275.00 under the $3,700.00 buyout
The fee is the one the lease or the landlord quotes, written as a number of months rather than dollars. A two-month fee on $1,850.00 rent is $3,700.00.
Advertising, cleaning, an agent fee, a lost month — whatever the landlord spends or loses filling the unit again. Leave it at 0 if the re-let is free.
Both paths are arithmetic on what you type, carried at full precision and rounded once to the nearest cent. The page does not decide whether a fee is enforceable, how much notice is needed, or whether the landlord has to try to re-let — those are set by the lease and by local law.
The same $1,850.00 rent measured two ways: the fee on top, the wait underneath.
The figure above shows one case; this table runs the same two formulas on four, with the rent held at $1,850.00 a month. Every row can be re-checked against the calculator on this page by typing its four inputs in.
| Case | Buyout | Rent until re-let | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 months left, 2-month fee, 1.5 months empty, $650.00 to re-let | $3,700.002 × 1,850.00 | $3,425.001.5 × 1,850.00 + 650.00 | Re-let, $275.00 less |
| 4 months left, 1-month fee, 2 months empty, $400.00 to re-let | $1,850.001 × 1,850.00 | $4,100.002 × 1,850.00 + 400.00 | Buyout, $2,250.00 less |
| 12 months left, 2-month fee, half a month empty, $300.00 to re-let | $3,700.002 × 1,850.00 | $1,225.000.5 × 1,850.00 + 300.00 | Re-let, $2,475.00 less |
| 9 months left, 3-month fee, 3 months empty, $1,100.00 to re-let | $5,550.003 × 1,850.00 | $6,650.003 × 1,850.00 + 1,100.00 | Buyout, $1,100.00 less |
A termination fee is almost always written as a number of months rather than a dollar figure, because the lease does not know the rent will still be the same figure later. Multiply the two and the buyout is a single number: two months on $1,850.00 is $3,700.00, and that is what it costs to hand the keys back and walk, whatever happens to the unit afterwards. Divided across the seven months still on the lease, the fee is $528.57 a month of the time it buys back, and it comes to 28.57% of the $12,950.00 of rent still owed.
That percentage is the number worth carrying into a negotiation. A two-month fee on seven months left is a fifth of the remaining obligation; the same two-month fee with two months left is the whole of it, and more.
The other way out is not a fee at all — it is the landlord's loss, and it has two parts. The first is the rent that does not arrive while the unit sits empty: 1.5 months at $1,850.00 is $2,775.00. The second is what it costs to find the next tenant: advertising, a cleaning crew, an agent fee, sometimes a month of rent to the agent. At $650.00 the two add to $3,425.00.
Both parts are inputs, not assumptions, and that matters because they move independently. A tight market shortens the empty months and the re-let path collapses toward the cost of advertising alone. A slow one does the opposite: at three months empty the same rent already costs $5,550.00 before a single dollar of re-letting is spent, and the buyout wins by a wide margin.
Set the two costs equal and the vacancy that makes them equal falls out: the fee minus the re-letting costs, divided by the rent. On the default case that is ($3,700.00 − $650.00) ÷ $1,850.00 = 1.65 months. Below 1.65 months empty the re-let path is cheaper; above it the buyout is. That single number is what the break-even row under the calculator reports, and it moves with the inputs rather than staying fixed.
Two things follow from the formula. If the fee is smaller than the re-letting costs alone, the break-even is negative and the re-let path cannot win at any vacancy — the page prints that rather than a minus sign pretending to be a month. And the break-even is always measured in months of rent, so a landlord who quotes the fee as a flat dollar amount still lands on the same comparison once it is divided by the rent.
Nothing here is legal advice, and four things are deliberately absent. The page does not say whether a termination fee is enforceable, whether the tenant is allowed to leave early at all, how much notice the lease requires, or whether the landlord has to make a reasonable effort to re-let. Those are set by the lease and by local law, they differ from one city to the next, and a figure printed for them without reading the source would be a guess wearing a number's clothes. No statutory cap and no notice period is quoted on this page, because none was read for it.
What the page does is the part that is the same everywhere: it multiplies a fee by a rent, multiplies a vacancy by the same rent, adds the re-letting costs, and puts the two totals side by side to the cent. It also stops the vacancy at the months left on the lease — a unit cannot sit empty for longer than the term it is being emptied out of — and says so when you type a longer one.
It depends which of two routes the lease takes. If it quotes a termination fee, the cost is that fee in months of rent: two months on $1,850.00 is $3,700.00. If it instead charges rent until the unit is re-let, the cost is the rent for the empty months plus whatever re-letting costs: 1.5 months plus $650.00 is $3,425.00. On those inputs the second route is $275.00 cheaper, and the calculator above prices both at once so the comparison is not left to guesswork.
Whichever of the two paths costs less at your inputs, and the break-even is a vacancy of (fee − re-letting costs) ÷ rent. On the default case that is 1.65 months: if the unit would re-let in less than 1.65 months, paying rent until it does is cheaper than buying the lease out; if it would sit empty longer, the buyout wins. Both routes are worth pricing before the conversation, because the cheaper one is often the one nobody quoted.
Not quite, and the difference is the whole point of the page. A buyout is a fixed price for ending the term — a fee measured in months of rent, paid once. Early lease termination can also mean the tenant keeps paying until a replacement tenant is found, which is a variable cost that depends on how long the unit stays empty. The first is a number the lease states; the second is a number the market decides. This page prices both under the same rent so they can be compared directly.
Then the re-let path is short and cheap. Two weeks is 0.35 of a month, so the empty rent is 0.35 × $1,850.00 = $647.50, and with $650.00 of re-letting costs the total is $1,297.50 — $2,402.50 below the $3,700.00 buyout. Type 0.35 into the months-empty field and the page runs that case; type 0 and it prices a re-let with no vacancy at all, which leaves only the re-letting costs.
Not on this page: the vacancy is capped at the months still on the lease, because a unit cannot sit empty for longer than the term being ended. With 7 months left, typing 9 months empty counts 7 and prints a warning saying so. The re-letting costs are not capped, since advertising and cleaning are spent whatever the term — but a figure above the rent still owed is a sign that the buyout is the cheaper route, and the calculator reports both totals rather than hiding the larger one.
No. Whether a tenant may end a lease early, what notice the lease requires, whether a fee is enforceable and whether the landlord must try to re-let are all set by the lease and by local law, and none of that is decided here. The page only does the arithmetic on the figures you type: a fee times the rent, a vacancy times the rent, the re-letting costs added, and the two paths compared to the cent.