Breaking the lease, CA

I signed one year lease with landlord to share a room with someone, it is a condo with 2 bed rooms, landlord's 2 adult sons lived in another room. I had to transfer to another school without any choice, I lived there for 4 months. I gave moving out notice to landlord's sons verbally since I did not have landlord contact information. I put an advertisement to look for my replacement before moving out, I gave landlord's son 9 people's contact phone numbers since he wanted to interview candidates, I saw a few UCLA students coming to see the room, none of them was selected, they were qualified tenants to me. The condo is located in Westwood CA near UCLA where is highly demanded area, it is easy to be rented. I noticed that his ads was taken out a week ago, he had interviewed people for 1 month, I assume that he has found a qualified tenant, but landlord only told me that he has a potential person at this time. I do not want to be held for the rent too long ,how can I make landlord to tell me if he has found a tenant and when the new rental actually starts?

[OHlandlord]

You signed a lease for a year. That was a legal contract. But you broke your lease and stayed for only 4 months. You gave verbal notice (this is supposed to be in writing) to vacate. You are responsible for the rent until the unit is re-rented.

You gave a list of prospects to the LL to screen. While you may think they were qualified, did you check their prior rental history? Talk to their former LLs? Did you do a criminal and civil background check on them? Check the sexual predator database for their names? Did you call their employers and verify their jobs and income? Did you pull their credit reports, see their payment history, calculate their debt to income ratio, see their credit scores? Check to see if they had ever been evicted before? If not, you have no idea if any of these people were qualified or not. People that were "qualified to you" haven't been screened properly. Only the LL can tell you if they meet his rental criteria. If you wish to know what his criteria is, ask him. Most LLs have a written criteria of who qualifies to rent from them. This process takes some time to do. You cannot screen someone overnight.

If he has a potential tenant, he is probably going through this process now. Not finding a tenant in a month when classes have already started for the term isn't unusual. Most students don't want to move in mid-term. Most are settled before it starts. The LL does have a duty to try and re-rent the unit. He is doing this. He has been advertising the unit. He has been interviewing prospects. He has a potential tenant that he is screening now. Once verified as being qualified, the tenant will sign a lease and move in and start paying rent. In the meantime, you owe the rent for the contract you broke, advertising costs, agent fees if he uses one to find a tenant, utilities if your lease said you were responsible for them, and any other unreimbursed costs the LL suffers because you broke your lease. Next time, you should carefully consider before signing your name to a legal contract.