What happens if you want to terminate your rental contract early?

Circumstances change, and for any one of a number of reasons, you may want to leave your current property for example City Walk apartments Dubai before the contract actually expires. But can you actually do this, and how do you actually go about it?

Check your contract closely

The first thing to do is to check the terms of your contract closely. You are not provided with any explicit legal right to terminate a contract early unless there is a clause within the contract that affords you that option. If your contract doesn’t have a specific exit clause, the landlord has no legal requirement to allow you to terminate the contract before its terms have been reached.

In many cases, landlords will account for this by offering certain stipulations as a part of an exit clause – for example, you might have to pay a certain fee.

Discuss it with your landlord

If you don’t have an exit clause in your contract, your next recourse is to take the matter up with your landlord directly. Remember that they have no legal obligation to let you out of your contract early, so it falls to you to appeal to their better nature to secure release.

Tell them why you want to be let out of your contract. If, for example, a change of circumstances means you can’t afford your rent any longer, it’s in the landlord’s interest to let you out of the contract and find another tenant who will be better able to manage their rent.

If you have been a particularly good tenant, your landlord may even be willing to renegotiate the terms of the contract with you to make them more affordable.

Finding a replacement tenant

If you have to leave your property, you can often have much better luck being allowed to end your contract early by lining up another tenant to take over the property after you. This means your landlord won’t have to waste any time advertising the apartment or villa for rent in Dubai and vetting potential new tenants, and won’t miss out on any rent where the property is unoccupied – this can help your case for being released from your contract considerably.