Can I remove a person from my lease and add another person without the landlord increasing our rent?

we want to renew our lease, but since one relative left the apartment and another relative wants to live here, we want to pay the same amount of money, but we don't think the landlord is going to agree. We told this person to reduce our rent since our relative was not living with us anymore, but this person said that that was not in the agreement. We had to leave it like that. |||It's totally up to the landlord. He most likely will allow the change, but he does not legally have to. Rent is usually based on the property...not the amount of people renting the property.|||Your landlord has the right to raise the rent if he/she is letting you out of the original lease and doing up a new one with new parties on it. You can't just remove one person and add another. That needs to be done with a new contract, and at that time, the landlord can choose to raise the rent. |||Your landlord will want to check the credit of the new occupant, so he may charge a fee for this. If the credit check comes back fine, he may not raise the rent, because he doesn't want the hassle. If your relative has bad credit, he may raise both the rent and the security deposit.