1.   Negotiate a lease-break agreement. If your lease doesn’t already have a lease-break clause which specifies what you must do in order to break the lease, then you’ll have to work this out with the landlord. Some negotiation points:

*  Offer up part or all of your security deposit
*  Offer to continue paying rent for 1-2 months after you vacate
*  Volunteer to find the next tenant to sign a new lease (you shoulder the costs of placing ads, costs of any screening, and showing the unit to prospective tenants) or try a market based solution like [www.apartmentleasedepot.com www.ApartmentLeaseDepot.com or www.moveoutnotice.com www.MoveOutNotice.com] and place a free listing.

This is the best way to get out of a lease because you won’t burn bridges and taint your rental history. The remainder of these steps will only work under laws which vary from place to place, and you may end up needing to hire a lawyer. Even then, sometimes the law will only require the landlord to address the issue, not let you out of your lease.

2.  Find something in your apartment that is dangerous. Your landlord is required to repair conditions that materially affect the physical health and safety of an ordinary tenant. [www.nolo.com/article.cfm/pg/1/objectId/F7E7C415-8893-4C68-9F9D9173D25977B8/catId/458FCF42-D150-4F2D-A25D38F73C8EEA6B/104/138/160/ART/ Nolo.com - Renters' Rights to Minor Repairs] You have to specify this condition in a notice certified return receipt to the place of which rent is normally paid, and you can’t owe any rent. In most cases, you must give the landlord time to make the repair, and send another written notice before you can take legal action.http://www.law.uh.edu/peopleslawyer/tenant3.html Also, you as the tenant or any of your friends can’t cause this condition so don’t take a sledge hammer to your smoke detector. Examples of these conditions might be:

*  mold
*  broken smoke detectors
*  severely loose railing on your balcony
*  holes in carpeting that could trip someone
*  security issues (e.g. broken lock or doorknob)

3.  Does your apartment look like the model they showed you when you leased? This one works a lot better when you have only lived in your apartment a short period of time. Most states have a Deceptive Trade Practices Act that prevents businesses from employing a “bait and switch” sales tactic. A lot of cases have recently come out against apartments that show you a ridiculously nice model that in no way is representative of the unit they gave you the keys to when you moved in. The repercussions in most Deceptive Trade Practices Acts are severe, and your apartment community will probably offer to pay you to move out once they get wind of a Deceptive Trade Practices Act suit against them. But, you may only be entitled to up to three times your damages plus any court costs and attorney’s fees involvedhttp://www.law.uh.edu/peopleslawyer/tenant3.html which doesn’t necessarily mean you can terminate your lease.

4.  Are your apartment complex entrance gates broken? Odds are that the security gates to your apartment complex are broken now, have been broken for a while, or are habitually broken. These electric gates are very expensive to maintain and idiots are always getting drunk and running into them. Apartments also love to advertise gated access as a selling point to their communities. This combination of disrepair and advertising leads to another good “bait and switch” argument, i.e., another legal reason to get out of a lease.

  In order to follow through with this legally, though, you’ll have to prove “fear of personal safety”. As outlined previously, you should send written notice, give them time to resolve the issue (e.g. 30 days) then send another letter, giving notice to terminate due to the landlord not having resolved the problem. The key in this holding up in court, however, is documentation: a photo log of the broken gate, official statements from you and other people who live with you, police report of incidences at or around the complex, etc.http://searchwarp.com/swa80110.htm

5.  Is the parking lot or garage of your apartment building unsafe? If so, you may have a pretty good civil negligence case against your landlord. Let’s say, for example, that your car has been broken into five times and your landlord refuses to spend 100 bucks on lighting the parking lot. There is a good chance that your landlord is acting negligently. A quality demand letter from an attorney will probably get you out of your lease and is a small price to pay for your safety. This area of landlord/tenant law is called premises liability and there some extreme cases on the books where tenants have been raped and killed because of the landlord’s refusal to take reasonable safety precautions.

6.  Do you even know who your landlord is? Most states require a landlord to disclose the name of the owner and management company of an apartment complex. A lot of small complexes and individually owned units attempt to hide the ownership and management company of the property to avoid dealing with maintenance requests, bill collectors, and to make it hard to sue them. If you demand notice in writing of ownership and management and you don’t get the information within some time period, there may be stiff penalties against the owner. One of the penalties probably includes allowing the tenant to terminate the lease.