> cost savings of moving is so great that it was cheaper to pay to break the lease than it would be to stay

What's the law on this? I've read that the landlord is required to make a good faith effort to replace you, but if they can't (or if they can't recoup the costs), you are on the hook.

So if the cost is 32% lower and the landlord can only find a tenant willing to pay that much, it seems like you are responsible for the 32% for the remaining months of the lease - which is no better than if you just hadn't moved. And that's not even including the fact that the place might be on the market for months.

All of my leases had buy-out provisions, usually one or two months of rent. I've never lived in SF, but I'm going to guess that tenant-friendly laws in California combined with historically good price growth provided landlords with an incentive to make it easy for tenants to break leases.

I know more than a few people from SF who were paid to break their leases. More churn means more "market adjustments" for rent prices, and market adjustment historically favored landlords.

You're confusing a few things. Because SF (until recently) has disproportionately been a sellers market, leases are written such that they benefit the landlord.

Buyout clauses are not symmetric and are uncommon in SF.

In the context you described, both the tenant and the landlord have incentives: the landlord wants to pay you to break the lease so they can charge higher prices, the tenant might want to accept the money. The landlord doesn't have to have any clause in the lease whatsoever to make this offer because you aren't obligated to accept it.

On the other hand, in the current market the landlord has no incentive to accept an offer that is less than what they feel like they will lose by you leaving. Since the market has collapsed, they'll lose quite a bit.

I don't see the math adding up to making money by breaking out of the lease in SF - unless the prices fall considerably more.

> You're confusing a few things. Because SF (until recently) has disproportionately been a sellers market, leases are written such that they benefit the landlord.

Right, which is why it makes sense that landlords would allow tenants to break leases for a fee. The landlord gets two/three months of rent from the current tenant, plus they have a waiting list of people and will have the unit moved into within a few days paying higher rent.

So the benefits to the landlord is more money. They get to legally double-charge for rent and raise rent prices on an accelerated schedule at the cost of one or two days of lost occupancy.

The only time this doesn't benefit the landlords is when rent prices collapse. But considering SF rent prices have been inflating at a double digit annual clip for a decade or more now, I doubt any landlord considered a drop in rent prices to be possible.

> So the benefits to the landlord is more money.

Here's the difference: the landlord can already choose release you from your lease if you pay a fee, there doesn't have to be a clause about that.

Adding a clause to the lease forces the landlord to let you leave if you pay the money, which in situations like this can hurt the landlord quite a bit.

So there's really no upside and only a downside. The only time you'd need to include a clause like that is to make the lease more attractive, which in SF until recently has not been necessary.

> What's the law on this?

Your understanding is correct, at least in general. If the tenant moves out and stops paying rent, the landlord has a claim for breach of contract. The landlord, however, must try to mitigate his damages by renting the property to someone else. The breaching tenant will be liable for vacancy costs as well as costs of finding a new tenant. If fair market value has gone down and the landlord can’t find a new tenant at the old rate, then the breaching tenant will be liable for the difference in the remainder of the lease term.

There may be statutory exceptions that allow a tenant to break a lease without liability in some circumstances. They’re things like military service, domestic violence, unsafe property, or landlord harassment. See this article for more info for California: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/tenants-right-break-...

there are ways to break a lease without penalty; I'd guess the qualifying circumstances vary state to state. also, some leases have explicit buyout clauses. I can get out of my current lease free and clear at any time by giving sixty days notice and paying an additional ~$2000 (a bit more than one month's rent). so if rents collapsed soon after renewing my lease, I could break even pretty easily by moving out.

Okay - I was talking specifically about California.

Most leases in SF do not have buyout clauses of this form I believe.

Possibly leases did stabilise this. Not everyone was in a position to cheaply give up their lease so if x% of people (on net) would want to leave the city modulo lease obligations, maybe something like x/12% of people would actually leave in a given month.