Broken lease may or may not appear on your credit.  It depends if your landlord reports you for unpaid rent.  If you broke a lease and didn’t pay a required penalty which was part of the leasing agreement, then it can be reported too.  When a landlord fails to collect unpaid rent from you, he or she will report debt to a collections agency. All these collections calls will be quite annoying, especially if you decide to ignore then and not work out some kind of payment arrangement for remaining balance.

Usually, collections agency will try to call you for a couple of months before they give up on you and report a defaulted debt to a credit bureau. Therefore, it may take a couple of months for a broken lease to appear on your credit.

The worst is not how long it takes for a broken lease to appear on your credit, but rather, how longs it really stays on your credit report.

If a judgement results from a civil lawsuit for break of leasing agreement, it may stay for up to 7 years on your credit report. 

Breaking an apartment lease is not a joke. If it ever shows up on your credit report, it will instantly cause a 50-70 point drop in your credit score. This is a significant drop, especially if you were somewhere in the low 600’s already. Dropping below 600 will present serious challenges for you to rent another property, get approved for a car loan or even purchase a house. If you ever want to know if your broken lease was ever reported to a credit bureau, we recommend you to get a free copy of your credit report.