Early termination of an apartment lease

Dear Kaitlyn,

How are you ? Your question makes a lot of sense, i met frequently travellers, expats, retirees in these situation, and things happen fast here, plans changes.

Unfortunately the practice is quiet clear, and largely digest by Cambodians and Foreigners who live here for a while, if you decide to leave your apartement, house, before the term agreed with the owners, they have full rights to retain the deposit.

I share with you the natural reaction : its not fair, especially in cause of major contingency, loss of a job, assignation to an other position forcing you to move etc... in other hands its an acceptable deal from the owner point of view, who compensate mainly the risk they takes renting without requiring very few tangible elements about the reliability of their tenants ( financial), remember how it was easy for you to rent your place and get in, formalities here are reduced to their minimum.

When you pay one, two, or three months deposit, the day you move in, an amount of money equal of half or one month is in almost 100% of the cases paid to the broker, understand here the tuk tuk driver, the neighbour, the receptionist or even the owner from the hotel you used to stay at your arrival etc...more rarely licenced a real estate broker. So if you leave before the term the loss can be immediate for the owner who calculate the commission based most of the time on one year rental lease agreement signed. These commission have to be reduced for its half in case of 6 month rental lease signed.

I come from a country were looking for an appartement is a pure nightmare, in Paris if you look for a place whatever your profession, your income, warranties taken from third parts, your relatives for exemples are always  asked.

Visits takes place after 2 hours waiting in a small hallway and conduct to introduce the appartement to groups of 5 to 10 people, in the same time.

I assume candidatures might be examined by the French ministry of interior, because it takes one to three weeks to get a second meeting.
Leaving in Asia since 2006, i enjoyed how easy are the process here, deposits are the only owner protection, i guess its fair enough.

In your case my advise will be taking as reference your lease agreement ( khmer version, ask some help) in absence of specific clause, the local authorities will consider than the owner is allow by practice to keep the amount of money you paid for the deposit.

The best solution is the old school one, trying to find a tenant to take over your actual place, and negotiating with a big smile the transition.

Hope it helps, good luck

Olivier Cerejo Meneses

Hi Olivier,

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. I certainly appreciated it and it proved to be quite helpful! I'm not sure I would have been able to get an answer from anywhere else- much less one that was easily laid out and understood.

I wish you all the best!

Kind regards,
Kaitlyn

Is there anyway you could rent out your apartment until the lease is finished? (I'm looking for a place to stay for a short period of time)

Hi Chloe,

We talked to our landlord and were actually able to get half the deposit back, so we ended up biting the bullet and ending the lease- sorry!    If you'd like, though, feel free to send me a private message of what sort of place you're looking for and I'd be happy to help look and ask around to see if anyone would be open to renting! Not sure if you're in Phnom Penh yet, but I know it can be hard to apartment hunt if you're not!

Best,
Kaitlyn