I had originally signed a lease with two other guys in a three bedroom townhouse, and everything was going well for about 6 months when one of our roommates (we'll call him Steve) asked us if it would be ok for his girlfriend to "visit" us from January until we got reassigned (we're all AF lieutenants). Basically he was asking if she could move in with us. My other roommate (he's a Josh) and I gave him a neutral answer so we could talk it out amongst ourselves, and took some time to figure out we didn't want another person in the house for anything more than a visit.

However, by the time we told him a definitive "no," (maybe a few days later) Steve had already arranged for his girlfriend to pretty much weigh anchor on her previous residence in another state (partially by paying her out of her previous lease). Long story short, Steve then decides without telling me or Josh that he was going to look for a new place to live. The first time we heard about it from Steve was the week before he moved out, and apparently he had already signed out of the old lease without me and Josh knowing about it.

My question is, how was Steve able to get out of our old lease without the consent of the other two roommates, and without incurring penalties? We haven't been reassigned, so there aren't any military orders to allow the military clause of the lease to work. What makes this even more complicated is that our lease is through a realty agency that our landlord uses to manage his properties, and the new place Steve got is through the same Realtor.

Anybody?