I signed an agreement to rent an apartment that allows the landlord to give me 90 days' notice to vacate regardless of when the lease expires. My broker advised me to sign the lease, saying that the clause is likely to be unenforceable. Do you agree with her?
"Whether or not such early-vacate provisions are enforceable will depend, in large part, on the nature of the tenancy," said Lucas A. Ferrara, a Manhattan lawyer and adjunct professor at New York Law School. Mr. Ferrara said that if the letter writer signed a lease for an unregulated apartment, the parties are free to agree to a wide array of mutually acceptable conditions, including the right for one or both sides to prematurely end the occupancy arrangement. "Absent any unusual or extenuating circumstances, such an early termination provision would be honored by our courts," he said.
Rent-regulated tenants, on the other hand, benefit from an extensive set of statutory protections. By law, Mr. Ferrara said, tenants signing a stabilized lease must be offered the choice of a one- or two-year term and landlords may not circumvent that right by inserting early- termination language. "If this letter writer is a rent-stabilized tenant, the maneuver would likely be viewed as an attempt to circumvent regulatory safeguards and would not be enforceable," Mr. Ferrara said.
It probably would be prudent, he noted, for the letter writer to have a lawyer review the agreement. "He or she would be in a better position to give the writer more particularized legal advice," he said.
To download a copy of the Q&A piece, please use this link: Can A Landlord End A Lease Prematurely?