9 months into a 12 month lease and they just paid an early termination fee. Buying a house. Fine by me, good luck to them.

I have collected a lot of these fees now. 1.5 months rent and it's entirely due to this forum. Thank you!

Cha Ching !

Yes, I finally add ETF into my last lease.

May I ask you these questions:

Did your tenant give you a written notice and was willing to pay one and a half month rent for ETF.

Can you tell me how the timing work?

e.g. moving out date was 1/31, when did they pay you ETF?

Did you also not return the security deposit? any other charges do you charge them other than ETF?

Thanks.

Alice wonder, when they pay has been different each time. I had someone pay 2 days after signing a brand new lease and another party pay 4 days after.

This particular tenant paid February rent and sent in a notice (I require that) that they would be out on the 24th.

I send deposit back as normal, less damages of course.

If they didn't pay the termination fee and broke lease early, I would take the fee right out of their deposit and send a bill and accounting for the balance plus damages.

I'm my opinion, the ETF is one of the holy grails of lease clauses.

NE,

You’re welcome!

Do you remember all the criticism I took when Id started promoting this?! Now it’s accepted and common.

Wonder when the holdouts will get on board?

I added them into my leases after reading about them here (thank you). Last year totally amazed me - I had two utilize that clause. One was from a property that I manage (the owner was not "happy" the person was leaving and breaking the lease until I mentioned that we were getting the ELT fee AND they were paying the rent until they left).

Then a few months later one of my own tenants gave me a "heads up" that he may be needing to leave early and was asking how much the fee was.

Congrats!

I had two of them in late 2018.