OP here. Intuit locked me out of my original account.
Thanks for the above responses. I've read Pub 527 many times and it doesn't answer the question. There is no doubt that amounts paid to cancel a lease are rental income in the year they are received.
To clarify: The question is around whether days spent at the property during the time the tenants (a) were paying rent but not occupying, and (b) had paid rent in order to get released from the rest of the lease, are considered personal days or rental days for purposes of allocating expenses between personal use and rental use when the rental property is considered a "home." Noting again the line in pub 527: "Any day that the unit is rented at a fair rental price is a day of rental use even if you used the unit for personal purposes that day."
Thanks again
