I own a vacation home that I occasionally rent to others for a couple of weeks at a time. Someone rented the house for two weeks, and after the first week a business opportunity arose that required him to return home — but he had paid me for both weeks. Fortunately, that same day I received a call from someone looking to rent the house for the second week.

Q: Am I obligated to return to the first tenant one week’s rent since I found another tenant who occupied the house for that week?

A: Renting property is essentially a purchase for a limited period of time. Consequently, when a tenant decides to leave in the middle of his lease he remains obligated to pay rent for the remainder of the lease. Furthermore, the tenant cannot prevent the owner from leasing the apartment to another person since it is better for a home to be occupied than to be abandoned (Rema, C.M. 316:1).

However, there is a disagreement as to who keeps the money the second tenant pays for his lease. One approach maintains that if the first tenant already paid the full amount, the money paid by the second tenant belongs to the owner, but if the first tenant did not yet pay the full amount to the owner, the monies received from the second tenant may be used to satisfy the first tenant’s obligation (Sma 316:3). The rationale is that once the first tenant paid for the months that he will not occupy the house he has severed his relationship with the property and thus has no grounds to keep the rent paid by the second tenant. In contrast, not paying indicates that he is waiting to see if he can sublease the house to another tenant so that he can keep the money the second tenant pays him and utilize those funds to pay the owner (Igros Moshe, C.M. 1:74, explaining the above position).

Many other authorities disagree and argue that in all circumstances the first tenant remains in charge for the duration of his lease and the rent paid by the second tenant belongs to the first tenant (Beis Yosef 312, Ketzos and Nesivos 316:2). Since the disagreement cannot be definitively resolved if the money was not yet collected, it is preferable for the first tenant and owner to share the rent collected from the second tenant (Igros Moshe loc. cit.).

In your case, since the first tenant already paid for the two weeks you may follow the position that rules that you may lease the house to a second tenant and keep the rent for yourself. It must be emphasized that if the rental agreement restricts the tenant from subleasing the house or apartment, there is an additional argument that the owner would keep any rent paid by the second tenant because the first tenant does not have the right to sublease the apartment and thus obviously he would have no claim to the second tenant’s rent (see Nesivos loc. cit. and Pischei Teshuvah 316:2).