Early termination of rental contract (June 2025)

[jayshah]

Hello All,

I'm writing to seek advice on the ordeal that we are facing with our current landlord. We are leaving Singapore in mid June 2025 and will need to break our lease. Our diplomatic clause can only be triggered in December 2025.

Our landlord has not been cooperative or even agreeable to many conversations. He is threatening to charge 4 months rent as compensation for the operational and financial loss he faced due to us breaking the lease. Our reason for leaving is both personal and professional. EP cancellation means that anyways foreigners like us have situations which change with respect to jobs and circumstances.
He has found a new tenant who will be occupying the unit immediately after we handover. He claims to have found the tenant at a lower rent than what we are paying (we don't believe this and he is somehow refusing to tell us the rent that the new tenant will be paying him).


We have offered to pay him for rental difference provided he shows us proof of his new rent so that we can accordingly reimburse him for the rental difference until December. But he has refused to tell us the amount. We have told him the fair ask should be the rental difference (if any) and money for fixing and cleaning the house to return it in original condition. He mentioned that he should penalise us for 4 months rent for breaking the lease. He already has our deposit of SGD 9.3 K (which is equivalent to our 2 months of rental). We find this unreasonable and unacceptable as he has already found the tenant for his unit. We have reached a deadlock in our discussions. We want to be able to save our deposit and also exit smoothly from this unit and also this country. Looking for a way to get legal advice or next steps on how best to approach this.

Look forward to feedback / advice / suggestions from this kind forum.

Best regards,

Jay Shah

[abbby]

Owner seems to be unreasonable, usually when new tenant is found current tenant will just pay the difference and make good anything that needs to be done. Seems like mediation is one of the ways, but usually mediation they will go in accordance with the contract signed.