breaking contract

I really feel sorry for your situation, but in all fairness you should really have asked for a 12 month contract and if not then walked away from the deal!

You live and learn!!!!

Technically the agents can pursue you for the remainder of the rent until the end of the contract or until someone else moves in, at which point the Landlord will be forced by the agents to pay another commission fee for finding new tenants. The landlord can then claim for the unearned portion of the commission that he paid to the agents for your tenancy.

For example, if you left after 10 months of a 12 month term, and the agents found someone to move in immediately, your liability would cease the day they moved in, but you would then owe the landlord the equivalent of 2 months' worth of commission.

Thhe landlord is extremely unlikely to refund your deposit in this case, and wqould be quite entitled to hold it inlieu of rent. Some would suggest that you should try and find another tenant privately, but the Reichman v Gauntlett case in 2006 set a legal precedent by declaring that a landlord 'has no duty to mitigate his loss by re-letting a property abandoned by his tenant'. In other words, the landlord does not have to find a new tenant and is perfectly entitled to make you pay the full amount.

 Moreover, the same case, the Courts decided that in certain circumstances it could be considered unreasonable for a landlord not to accept a replacement tenant to take over the remaining portion of the lease.

Often tenants offer longer Tenancy, as they want to secure the rent for as long as they can. The landlord has no control to increase the rent for the fixed long term, however landlords benefit from that as they don't have to prepare the property again to be put on the market etc.

During 24 months fixed tenancy, the landlord can not serve notice, even if they want to move back in their property for whatever reason, but if a tenant has to break, because they don't like it there or because they want to accept a job elsewhere or whatever reason, then everybody feels sorry for them. They then blame the agents and the owners because they will not release them from their contract. that same contract that they have proposed to sign.

I don't think this is fare. Do you?At the end of the day you are the Tenant, who has found and loved the property initially,. then you are the one who has offered the long period because you probably didn't want to be asked for more money for another year, or you just didn't want to risk to be asked to leave or because moving to a new property costs so much-like a new deposit before having the old one back in your pocket and many more other reasons that you might have had at the time.

All the landlord has done was accepting your offer and the fact that you have to leave earlier is not the landlords problem and you can't blame them or the agents that have helped you finding the property. You should have thought about it before offering and signing.

 2  years is a long period of time and anything can happen. I am a landorld myself and have been in a difficult situation when my tenants left after 4 months having signed for 1 year. they didn't even tell me. they just left one day. having the deposit helped as a compensation, but I had to prepare the property for the market, come in the country(I live abroad) and sort everything out. It did cost me a lot of money, but nobody really cared. But if a landlord asks a tenant, who has broken a contract to pay the rent-everyone thinks that iti s unfare. Well may be just try to understand the people on the other side too.

I am sorry for all the people that have lost their jobs. It is an awful situation to be in, but leaving a property vacant when a landlord is not aware may cost the landlord a lot-like loosing the property because of an unpaid mortgage.

Please correct me if you think I am wrong.

You could replace yourself - I was told by Foxtons.. but who knows, they do tend to tell alot of fibs - that in a case such as yours you would be able to replace yourself and have the new tenant pay a small admin fee and the contract would be handed over to him/her?