Yes. A landlord must make a reasonable effort to find a new renter. The old rule said landlords didn't have to do anything because a lease was seen as temporarily selling the property. But the court said that today, a lease is more like a regular contract. In almost every other kind of contract, if one person breaks the deal, the other person has a duty to try to limit the financial damage, not let it get worse. It's also wasteful to let a good property sit empty, so making landlords try to re-rent the space is better for everyone.

Yes, the person renting out the property must try to find a new renter if the current renter leaves early, unless they agreed in writing not to. This is because rental agreements are like other business contracts, and it's wasteful to let the property sit empty. If the person renting out the property doesn't try to find a new renter, they can't get back all the money they lost, only what they couldn't have avoided losing. It's up to the renter who left early to prove the property owner didn't try hard enough and how much money they could have saved.

Yes. A landlord has a duty to make reasonable efforts to mitigate damages when a tenant breaches a lease and abandons the property. The court abandoned the traditional common law rule that landlords have no duty to mitigate, which was based on the outdated concept of a lease as a pure conveyance of property. The court reasoned that modern leases are a hybrid of conveyance and contract, and therefore, general contract principles—including the duty to mitigate—should apply. Public policy also supports this duty, as it discourages economic waste, encourages the productive use of property, helps prevent vandalism to vacant properties, and is consistent with the legal system's general disfavor of contract penalties.

Yes, a landlord has a duty to make reasonable efforts to mitigate damages when a tenant breaches a lease and abandons the property, unless the commercial landlord and tenant contract otherwise. This duty is consistent with the contractual nature of modern leases and public policy which discourages economic waste and encourages productive use of property. The landlord's failure to mitigate damages bars recovery against the breaching tenant only to the extent that damages could have been reasonably avoided. The tenant bears the burden of proof to demonstrate the landlord's failure to mitigate and the amount by which the landlord could have reduced its damages.

Austin Hill Country Realty, Inc. v. Palisades Plaza, Inc.

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