Breaking our lease the RIGHT way, but manager is impossible to get a hold of--HELP!

We have done everything according to the rules when it comes to breaking our lease, but now the manager seems to be neglecting us and I fear we will get hit with extra charges/loss of our deposit.

When we realized that we would be moving over 2 months ago, my husband and I talked to our current manager right away. We let him know we were going to move and would sell our lease to someone else, which is in accordance with the lease we signed. 30 days before the date we were scheduled to move out, we sent an intent to vacate form. We lined up new tenants to take over the apartment for the last month of our contract. They met with the manager, and they said they'd come back and sign the lease when we were ready to move out.

Since then, the manager has been almost impssible to get a hold of. He keeps taking off on vacations, leaving us with no way to communicate with him if we have questions of problems. He said there would be a lady in the office to take care of things, but she rarely answers her phone and is never in the office. We completely moved out last Thursday, leaving more than the mandatory 3 days before the end of the month for general cleaning and carpet cleaning. However, the management did not do their duty and has put off doing these things. They have not been around for the new tenants to even sign their lease, leaving us to pay the rent for July because we will be hit with a $30 late fee if we don't. We call and call, and leave messages, but no one ever gets back to us.

Meanwhile, the new tenants are waiting to move in to our old apartment but there is no manager around to let them sign the lease! I feel that my husband and i should not be responsible for paying rent for July because the managers are impossible to contact, especially if we get hit with a late fee for waiting until the last minute to pay in hopes that our managers would take care of things, which they still haven't.

Do I have any legal rights in this? What can I do to ensure that I get my rent $ back, money that I should not have had to pay but now must because the manager was unavailable? I don't even know what to do about the new tenants--there's nothing we can do! I don't even know if the apartment has been cleaned yet! I feel that this is completely unfair.

Any tips?

Oh, and if it helps, I live in Utah.

The unit should not need cleaned. It was your obligation to leave the unit clean and ready to re-rent, especially if you were breaking your lease. The only things the management should have to do is to make any needed repairs or do maintance for normal wear and tear. Cleaning is not normal wear & tear. That was your responsiblilty.

Did the prospective tenants fill out an application for management? Were they approved after management screened them? Finding new tenants isn't enough. You have to find new tenants that meet managements' qualifications for an acceptable tenant. You should check with the applicants and find out. If they were not acceptable to managment, then you need to try and find another tenant for the unit.

Utah law says the LL has a duty to mitigate damages by trying to re-rent the unt. I suggest you obtain the applicants' contact and personal information and send a certified letter to management stating that these people are waiting to rent your unit. Make sure you list the dates they met the manager and when they wanted to move in. List all the attempts (dates, times, & methods) of contact with the manager or the office staff. Show that you have made many atatempts to get management to do their duty to re-rent the unit. Send this letter by cetified mail, return receipt requested. Keep a copy for your records.

If management keeps your deposit for the future rent (since you have already paid July's by now), you can sue them in small claims court for failing to try to mitigate damages.