Trillium North Residential Trillium Residential Living lockdown, unable to break lease without ridiculous penalties Phoenix Arizona

Trillium north, apart of Trillium Residential @ http://trilliumresidential.com/north/ - This complex, at first glance, is very awesome. They have an incredible great room, wonderful pool, friendly staff and starbucks coffee. Location wise it's close to Desert Ridge mall and just next to the north loop of the 101.

The problem with Trillium North isn't the housing, the amenities, or the professional and friendly staff, the problem is with their contracts when it comes to breaking a lease early. There is no flexibility, and no care from their staff, or corporate offices.

See, the way they have their fees structured is the standard 30 days notice + rent (fair) for an early termination which is standard and fair, my rent is around $850 and fluctuates based on water price. Then they have a "buyout/lease termination fee" which looks to be equal to approx. 1.5 times the amount of rent. For my 1 bed bedroom apartment my fee is $1428.00. Next up, they also include your concession fees, which they include a large amount of concession typically, since the rent prices for 1 bedroom apartments start at around $950. My "up front" concession was $510.00, and they also included a monthly conession fee of $925.00 split over the course of the rent (which has been 8 months so far). This total equals out to $3716.00 which is the cost of about 4.5 total months of living.

I attempted to contact the apartment Community Manager because as life circumstances evolve, I've recently been put into a position where I'm having to do a lot more traveling, and therefor need somewhere closer to where I need to be so I'm not spending as much time and money on gas every day, I knew this would be a costly decision but I wanted to see if it could be done. First I asked for the total cancellation amounts, which those were provided to me at the price points I described above ($3716 total).

Next, after seeing the ridiculous fee schedule, I attempted to negotiate... the response received was:

"Thank you for the email, and sorry to hear about your situation.  All of that driving is keeping you busy for sure.

After calculating the lease termination fees and compared it to finishing out your lease, the cost comes out about the same.  Your monthly rent is about $800 per month [it's actually 850 per month but who's counting]; take this times the 5 months left on your lease (Sept-January) and this is $4000 [$4200 when using my real rent costs]."

So basically: I may as well stick out my rent since 5x my lease is around $4000.00 (yeah about 4-5 months worth of lease in total cancellation fees)

So, I asked again if they could bring it up for a potential look to their corporate offices and asked if they would be willing to work with me and negotiate. I offered $2000 total as a counter offer to cancel. The pricing I based on their same numbers but divided by 12 and multiplied by 8, then rounded up to the nearest thousand.

I offered:

30-days of rent:

$850 

Early termination fee @ 4 months left:

$1428 / 12 = $119 x 4 (months left on my lease) = $476

My monthly concession fee @ $113.75 per month, so I included 4 months of unused conession in my math:

$113.75 x 4 = $452 

The total: $1778, offered as $2000.00 to spice up the potential acceptance (approx. 2.5 months rent)

The response I received from the community manager was:

"While I understand what you are saying, we unfortunately are not able to renegotiate or reduce the fees owed.  For fair housing reasons, we do have to stick with the terms of the lease contract.  Thank you."

They used the phase "for fair housing reasons" which sounds like if they negotiated a rate with me, everyone in the community would rage and demand to cancel for a lot less too. I didn't think $2000.00 is unreasonable, and yes I understand that I'm in a contract, but that's what negotations are for and most apartment complexes are accomodating and will work with you on problems.

The fact is, Trillium North may be a nice complex, but their management will give no le-way what-so-ever in regards to life circumstances. So unless you plan on being their for a full 12 months (or whatever your lease time may be), you probably want to stay away from this complex, as you're not going to be able to get out of the complex for anything remotely close to a fair price.