Lease Acceleration Clause
in Your Lease
What it actually means, what District of Columbia law says, what's specific to Washington - and exactly what to do. In plain English.
Quick Summary - What You Need to Know
- D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 provides that where a tenant refuses to take possession in bad faith, or vacates a rental unit before the end of a lease term, any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to are subject to that provider's duty to mitigate actual damages for breach of the rental agreement.
- The phrase carrying the section is actual damages, used twice: what is recoverable is the provider's real loss, and that loss is itself subject to the duty to mitigate.
- It names no deadline, no re-renting steps and no cap in dollars or months, so whether the provider's efforts were reasonable is decided case by case.
- It was added by D.C. Law 21-210, § 2(d), effective February 18, 2017, an act whose purpose clause names an affirmative duty to mitigate damages due to a tenant's breach.
- 14 DCMR § 304.4 bars a jury-trial waiver, a term putting the owner's court costs or legal fees on the tenant, and a confession of judgment by anyone else, and D.C. Code § 42-3509.01(a-2) makes a bad-faith violation of section 304 carry treble damages.
Understanding the Lease Acceleration Clause
The acceleration paragraph is the one that stops counting months and starts counting a balance. Sign it, leave before the term is up, and the housing provider's letter arrives with every unexpired month already added together.
The District answers that with a single sentence of statute. Under D.C. Code § 42-3505.52, any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to are subject to that provider's duty to mitigate actual damages for breach of the rental agreement, which puts the arithmetic on the loss rather than on the lease.
What renters assume
Renters go looking for the sentence that kills the clause outright, and the District does write that sentence somewhere: lease terms here are declared void and unenforceable by name. Find the list, the thinking goes, and an acceleration paragraph is either on it or it stands.
What is actually true
The void-and-unenforceable language is real and it is pointed elsewhere. D.C. Code § 42-3505.53 uses it on a lease term demanding more than a 30-day notice of intention to vacate, and 14 DCMR § 304.1 uses it on provisions waiving the terms of that chapter of the Housing Regulations. Section 42-3505.52 carries no waiver clause of its own, and whether a lease can contract around it is not answered by the text of the sections our District record read. What the section does give you is a measure: actual damages, subject to the duty to mitigate them.
Twenty-two rows sit on this chart and each carries a label instead of a number, so what is being compared here are descriptions and not quantities. Washington's label reads Mandatory, actual damages.
Fourteen of those labels open with the word mandatory: Austin, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, Nashville, Portland, Las Vegas, Washington, Newark, Baltimore, Minneapolis and Milwaukee. Of the eight that do not, Miami and Philadelphia say there is no duty to re-rent, Atlanta says the duty is likely absent, Denver, Columbus and Boston all begin with no statute before pointing at case law and at 93A limits, Detroit's reads Non-waivable by lease, and Charlotte's reads Case law; tenant proves.
Inside the mandatory group the labels differ in what they fasten the duty to. Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas and Minneapolis all attach it to abandonment, and Phoenix attaches it to abandonment as well. Washington's names no trigger event and no waiver rule but the measure of the bill: what a housing provider may recover is actual damages, and D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 subjects those damages to the duty to mitigate them.
Plain English Version
A demand for the whole balance is a claim rather than a settled bill, and District law measures it by what was actually lost. The bill is the real loss caused by your leaving, and the same sentence that allows it puts the housing provider under a duty to keep that loss down. Nothing in it fixes a deadline, a re-renting method or a ceiling, so reasonable effort is decided on what actually happened in your tenancy.
Lease Acceleration Clause Example - What the Wording Looks Like in Washington, DC
The sample clause below is real lease language - a court quoted it word for word, and then ruled on it. What the judge decided is at the bottom of this block.
Find the equivalent paragraph in your own lease and read the two side by side. The wording will differ; the moving parts rarely do.
If any monthly installment under this agreement is not paid when due and remains unpaid after a date specified by a notice to Tenant, the entire principal rent amount owed for the full lease term shall at once become due and payable at the option of the Landlord and judgment may be had for all said amounts due. The foregoing provision shall not relieve the Landlord of its obligation to mitigate damages. In the event the rental premises is re-rented to another for full value prior to expiration of the lease term, Landlord shall file Notice of Partial Satisfaction of any judgment entered to the extent of the third party rental agreement.
Quoted from the published opinion in Summers v. Crestview Apartments, 2010 MT 164, 357 Mont. 123, 236 P.3d 586 (No. DA 09-0489). Judicial opinions are not subject to copyright; the lease language is reproduced in limited part for commentary under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
“If any monthly installment”
One missed installment is the trigger, and everything after it in the clause is arithmetic on the term ahead. The one Code provision in the District that measures what a landlord collects together with possession counts the other way. § 42-3211 lets a landlord in an action under § 42-3210 join "a claim for all arrears of rent accrued to the termination of the tenancy", and double rent only "when the tenant has given the notice": arrears behind you, not rent in front of you. No section our District of Columbia record read in Chapter 32 or Chapter 35 names rent acceleration, which leaves the mitigation duty as the provision a clause like this is measured against.
“amount owed for the full lease”
"The full lease term" is the whole of what you would have paid had you stayed, demanded on the day you left. The District measures that demand against loss. § 42-3505.52 is one sentence, and the phrase doing the work in it is "actual damages", used twice: what the housing provider may recover is its real loss, and that loss "shall be subject to the duty of the housing provider to mitigate". The act that added the section describes it as requiring "that a housing provider have an affirmative duty to mitigate damages". A lump sum for months the unit is re-let is not a loss the provider sustained.
“Landlord and judgment may be”
The clause runs from the Landlord's option straight to a judgment. The District's Housing Regulations name the shortcuts that path is usually paved with. 14 DCMR § 304.4: no owner shall place in a lease a provision "waiving the right of a tenant of residential premises to a jury trial, or requiring that the tenant pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, or authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant", though a court may still assess fees "in appropriate circumstances". § 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision at all.
“amounts due. The foregoing”
The clause turns on itself here: the sentence that demands every dollar is followed by one conceding the duty to mitigate. The District does not leave that concession to the drafter. § 42-3505.52 writes the duty into the Code as the housing provider's own, and it carries no waiver clause of its own. The void-and-unenforceable language nearby is aimed elsewhere: § 42-3505.53 at a notice-to-vacate term, and 14 DCMR § 304.1 at waivers of the Housing Regulations' own landlord and tenant chapter. Whether a lease could contract around the mitigation section is not something the sections our District of Columbia record read answer.
The Montana Supreme Court struck this paragraph down, and its conclusion is one sentence: “Thus, we conclude that the accelerated rent provision is unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.” The tenants had moved out of their apartment on October 13, 2006, and Crestview answered with a Statement of Deductions from the Security Deposit charging rent through the end of the lease in June - $6,505.75 billed against a $2,170 deposit. Two reasons carried the court. Acceleration undermines the landlord's duty to mitigate and reduces the incentive to re-rent promptly, because a landlord already holding a judgment for the whole term has little reason to fill the unit. And Crestview drafted the lease while these tenants had no meaningful choice and no opportunity to negotiate any of it. The case was reversed and remanded, and two justices wrote separately - their objection being that the majority had gone as far as treating acceleration clauses as unenforceable in themselves. So read the holding narrowly, as the majority wrote it: this provision, in this residential lease, unconscionable and unenforceable. It is a Montana decision and it binds no other state's courts. What travels is the reasoning, and the reasoning is about mitigation - which is exactly the question the statute in your own city's decode answers.
One court, one lease, one state. That answer is not automatically yours, and your lease may be worded to land differently. Use this to know what to look for and what to ask - your state's tenant hotline or a local tenant attorney can answer it for your document.
District of Columbia Law on Lease Acceleration Clause
- D.C. Code § 42-3505.52, titled "Housing provider duty to mitigate damages after breach of the rental agreement by tenant," is a single sentence with two triggers: "If a tenant refuses to take possession of a rental unit in bad faith, or vacates a rental unit before the end of a lease term, any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to shall be subject to the duty of the housing provider to mitigate actual damages for breach of the rental agreement." The phrase doing the work is "actual damages," used twice - what is recoverable is the provider's real loss, and that loss is itself subject to the duty to mitigate. The section names no deadline, no re-renting steps and no cap in dollars or months. It was added by D.C. Law 21-210, § 2(d), effective February 18, 2017, and the act's own purpose clause describes it as requiring "that a housing provider have an affirmative duty to mitigate damages due to a tenant's breach of a rental agreement."
- Section 42-3505.52 carries no waiver clause of its own, and two nearby provisions show what one looks like when the District writes it. D.C. Code § 42-3505.53, added by the same act, says a lease provision requiring more than a 30-day notice of the tenant's intention to vacate upon the expiration of an initial lease term "shall be void and unenforceable" unless the lease states what that section requires - a rule about notice length, not about mitigation. And 14 DCMR § 304.1 provides that "Any provision of any lease or agreement contrary to, or providing for a waiver of, the terms of this chapter, or § 101 or § 106 of chapter 1, shall be void and unenforceable," which voids waivers of the terms of 14 DCMR Chapter 3, the Housing Regulations' landlord and tenant chapter, rather than of the Rental Housing Act section that carries the mitigation duty. Whether a lease can contract around § 42-3505.52 is not answered by the text of the sections we read.
- 14 DCMR § 304, "PROHIBITED WAIVER CLAUSES IN LEASE AGREEMENTS," bars several terms an acceleration clause is commonly bundled with. Section 304.4: "No owner shall place (or cause to be placed) in a lease or rental agreement a provision waiving the right of a tenant of residential premises to a jury trial, or requiring that the tenant pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, or authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant," though the same subsection adds that it "shall not preclude a court from assessing court or legal fees against a tenant in appropriate circumstances." Section 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision. D.C. Code § 42-3509.01(a-2) prices a violation, and its list is specific: a housing provider "found to have violated any provision of section 533, section 534, or section 535, or section 304 of Title 14 of the Housing Regulations of the District of Columbia ... shall be liable to the tenant for treble damages if the housing provider is found to have acted in bad faith." Sections 533, 534 and 535 are D.C. Code §§ 42-3505.53, 42-3505.54 and 42-3505.55; section 532, the mitigation duty at § 42-3505.52, is not among the sections that subsection names. The § 304 text was read from the D.C. Office of Documents' adopted-rule file for section 14-304 rather than from a republisher.
- The one D.C. Code provision we read that measures what a landlord may collect with possession counts arrears, not future rent. D.C. Code § 42-3211 provides that in an action in ejectment - available under § 42-3210 "Whenever a lease for any definite term shall expire, or any tenancy shall be terminated by notice as aforesaid, and the tenant shall fail or refuse to surrender possession of the leased premises" - the landlord "may join with his claim for recovery of the possession of the leased premises a claim for all arrears of rent accrued to the termination of the tenancy, and, when the tenant has given the notice, for double rent from the termination of the tenancy to the verdict, or judgment," plus damages for waste. That is a joinder rule for one kind of action rather than a ban on accelerating rent: no section we read in D.C. Code Chapter 35 (Rental Housing Generally) or Chapter 32 (Landlord and Tenant) names rent acceleration, which leaves § 42-3505.52's duty to mitigate as the provision a District acceleration clause is measured against.
Sources include D.C. Code § 42-3505.52; 14 DCMR § 304 - statutes change; verify the current text for your situation.
The operative provision is one sentence long. D.C. Code § 42-3505.52, titled "Housing provider duty to mitigate damages after breach of the rental agreement by tenant," reads: "If a tenant refuses to take possession of a rental unit in bad faith, or vacates a rental unit before the end of a lease term, any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to shall be subject to the duty of the housing provider to mitigate actual damages for breach of the rental agreement." Two triggers, and one phrase used twice: actual damages.
A paragraph demanding the unexpired term as a lump sum is therefore measured against the loss the provider could reasonably have avoided rather than enforced on its own arithmetic. What the section leaves open is a short list: no deadline, no re-renting procedure and no cap in dollars or months, so whether the provider's efforts were reasonable is decided case by case, and there is no figure for the District on this page's chart. The duty arrived through D.C. Law 21-210, § 2(d), effective February 18, 2017, an act whose purpose clause required "that a housing provider have an affirmative duty to mitigate damages due to a tenant's breach of a rental agreement."
Section 42-3505.52 carries no waiver clause of its own, and two neighbours show what one looks like when the District writes it. D.C. Code § 42-3505.53, added by the same act, says a lease provision requiring more than a 30-day notice of the tenant's intention to vacate upon the expiration of an initial lease term "shall be void and unenforceable" unless the lease states what that section requires, which is a rule about notice length rather than about mitigation. 14 DCMR § 304.1 voids any lease provision "contrary to, or providing for a waiver of, the terms of this chapter, or § 101 or § 106 of chapter 1," reaching 14 DCMR Chapter 3, the Housing Regulations' landlord and tenant chapter, rather than the Rental Housing Act section that carries the mitigation duty. Whether a lease can contract around § 42-3505.52 is not answered by the text of the sections our District record read.
That regulation does bar terms an acceleration clause can be bundled with. 14 DCMR § 304 is headed "PROHIBITED WAIVER CLAUSES IN LEASE AGREEMENTS," and § 304.4 says "No owner shall place (or cause to be placed) in a lease or rental agreement a provision waiving the right of a tenant of residential premises to a jury trial, or requiring that the tenant pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, or authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant," while adding that it "shall not preclude a court from assessing court or legal fees against a tenant in appropriate circumstances." Section 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision. D.C. Code § 42-3509.01(a-2) prices a breach at treble damages where the housing provider "is found to have acted in bad faith," and the list it names is sections 533, 534 and 535, which are §§ 42-3505.53, 42-3505.54 and 42-3505.55, together with section 304 of Title 14. Section 532, the mitigation duty at § 42-3505.52, is not on it.
One older provision measures money alongside possession, and it counts backwards. In an action in ejectment, available under § 42-3210 where a lease for a definite term expires or a tenancy is terminated by notice and the tenant fails or refuses to surrender possession, § 42-3211 lets the landlord "join with his claim for recovery of the possession of the leased premises a claim for all arrears of rent accrued to the termination of the tenancy," with double rent from that termination to the verdict or judgment where the tenant gave the notice, plus damages for waste. That is a joinder rule for one kind of action rather than a ban on accelerating rent. No section our record read in D.C. Code Chapter 35 or Chapter 32 names rent acceleration, which leaves the duty in § 42-3505.52 as the provision a District acceleration clause is measured against. Read the current text of the sections you rely on.
District of Columbia Tenant Protections
The duty sits on the housing provider rather than on you: D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 makes any actual damages they may be entitled to, where a tenant refuses possession in bad faith or vacates before the end of a lease term, subject to their duty to mitigate those damages, and D.C. Law 21-210's purpose clause calls it an affirmative duty.
Separately, 14 DCMR § 304.4 tells an owner what may not go into the lease at all: no waiver of a residential tenant's right to a jury trial, nothing requiring the tenant to pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, and nothing authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant, though a court is not precluded from assessing court or legal fees against a tenant in appropriate circumstances. § 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision, and D.C. Code § 42-3509.01(a-2) makes a housing provider found to have violated section 304 liable to the tenant for treble damages if it acted in bad faith.
What's Specific to Washington
Figures are the state rule, or the stronger city ordinance where one exists. Verify the current law for your own situation before relying on it.
Washington is the District of Columbia, so the two layers a city guide keeps apart, a statute and then a municipal rule on top of it, are written here by one legislature. The Council of the District of Columbia passed the Residential Lease Clarification Amendment Act of 2016, D.C. Law 21-210, which is what put § 42-3505.52 into the D.C. Code, and the Housing Regulations in 14 DCMR are the same government's rules, enforced by District agencies.
For a renter that changes the search rather than the answer. There is no state legislature above this city and no county in between, so the Code section is already the local rule, and our District record found no separate municipal ordinance to look up on top of it. The pair to read together is § 42-3505.52 for what the money is measured as and 14 DCMR § 304 for what the lease may not contain.
Our record read § 42-3505.52 in full, along with §§ 42-3505.53, 42-3505.55, 42-3509.01 and 42-3509.03, the enrolled text of D.C. Law 21-210, §§ 42-3210 and 42-3211 in the Landlord and Tenant chapter, and 14 DCMR § 304 from the D.C. Office of Documents' own adopted-rule file. It read the section lists of D.C. Code Title 42, Chapters 32 and 35 and the section titles of 14 DCMR Chapter 3, but not every section body in them.
Good sign, and the statute says the same. Under D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 what a housing provider may be entitled to is actual damages, subject to the duty to mitigate them.
Ask what loss the total stands for. D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 puts any actual damages the housing provider may be entitled to under a duty to mitigate them.
Both are named in 14 DCMR § 304.4, which says no owner shall place either provision in a lease or rental agreement.
14 DCMR § 304.4 bars that provision too, and § 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision.
Sources
The law this guide relies on, and where to read it. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before you act on it.
- D.C. Code § 42-3505.52; 14 DCMR § 304 on code.dccouncil.gov, District of Columbia's own publication of its statutes.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
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A balance that names no loss
The letter totals the unexpired months and stops there. D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 measures what a housing provider may be entitled to as actual damages, so the question to put in writing is what loss the figure is measuring.
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Your jury trial signed away in the lease
14 DCMR § 304.4 says no owner shall place in a lease or rental agreement a provision waiving the right of a tenant of residential premises to a jury trial.
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The owner's legal fees written onto you
14 DCMR § 304.4 also bars requiring that the tenant pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, although it does not preclude a court from assessing them against a tenant in appropriate circumstances.
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A confession of judgment in the fine print
A term letting somebody other than you confess judgment against you. 14 DCMR § 304.4 bars it, and § 304.2 bars demanding that a person sign a lease containing a prohibited provision.
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One statement covering two different periods
Arrears from before you left and months after it, added into a single figure with no dates. D.C. Code § 42-3211 lets a landlord suing in ejectment join a claim for arrears of rent accrued to the termination of the tenancy, a rule for that action rather than a ban on accelerating rent, so ask what period each line covers.
Your Rights as a Washington Tenant
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The mitigation duty is affirmative
D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 subjects any actual damages a housing provider may be entitled to, after a tenant vacates before the end of a lease term, to that provider's duty to mitigate them, and D.C. Law 21-210's purpose clause calls it an affirmative duty.
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The bill is a loss, not a total
The phrase the section uses twice is actual damages. What is recoverable is the provider's real loss, and that loss is itself subject to the duty to mitigate.
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Terms an owner may not write in
14 DCMR § 304.4 bars a lease provision waiving a residential tenant's right to a jury trial, requiring the tenant to pay the owner's court costs or legal fees, or authorizing a person other than the tenant to confess judgment against a tenant.
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Treble damages for a bad-faith breach
D.C. Code § 42-3509.01(a-2) makes a housing provider found to have violated section 304 of Title 14 of the Housing Regulations liable to the tenant for treble damages if the provider is found to have acted in bad faith.
What To Do - Step by Step
Find the paragraph and the trigger it names
It sits under default or remedies. Look for a promise that the remaining rent becomes payable in full the moment you breach, however the lease words it. D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 names two triggers of its own: refusing possession in bad faith, and vacating before the end of a lease term.
Tell the housing provider in writing that you are going
A dated letter or email fixes the day the unit went back, and that date is where every later argument about empty months begins.
Photograph the unit on the day you hand over keys
Room by room, with the date on the files, and note who took the keys. Condition evidence is what separates a vacancy nobody could avoid from one nobody worked at.
Watch how the unit is re-advertised
Screenshot the listing wherever it appears and note the rent it asks and the day either changes. D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 fixes no re-renting procedure, so what was actually done is a question of fact.
Ask for the damages in itemized form
Put the request in writing: which months are being charged, what the unit was relisted at, and when a new tenancy started. A total with no dates behind it is a figure you cannot check.
Get the paragraph read by someone in the District
A D.C. landlord-tenant attorney or a legal aid office can weigh your wording against D.C. Code § 42-3505.52 and 14 DCMR § 304, and confirm the current text of both with you, before you agree to any figure.