davis_square | Landlord problem - breaking the lease (Reply)

I've looked through some of the past posts regarding landlord / tenant issues, and couldn't quite find the information I was looking for. I will be leaving Somerville to move to NYC in February for a new job, and I need to break my apartment lease. My landlord has agreed to terminate my tenancy under the following terms: 1) a light cleaning, and 2) a termination fee equal to 4 months rent. That seems insane to me, and I've been looking around for information online, but everything seems so ambiguous and I haven't been able to find anything definitive. My landlord has also explicitly forbidden subletting. I guess my questions are whether I actually do have to pay this, and if not, how do I respond to this?

I received some advice that suggested that if I'm able to find someone creditworthy interested in assuming the remainder of the lease (I guess that's somehow semantically different from a sublet, although I don't quite know why) then that releases me from the lease, regardless of whether or not the landlord accepts this person.

Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? I've talked with a bunch of people who have broken their lease and most of them just had to forfeit their security deposit. Four months rent is a lot of money and I'm kind of freaking out. I don't know how to get my landlord to reduce that amount and I don't want this to turn into a messy, ugly situation. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks!