We’ve all done it. When presented with a legal document, whether an EULA, terms and conditions, or a rental agreement, it is far too easy to jump to the end and sign. We blindly sign our name for twenty minutes of Wi-Fi, and we fly through documents that will impact our lives for years. It’s a harrowing thought when it comes to agreements that can impact finances, your credit, and your life for years to come. When you rent a home or apartment, ask for a documented lease and read it! A lease lays out expectations and protections for both your landlord and your family.
We are fortunate this week to explore another community request. Friend of the site Mike posed the question–“I’m looking to rent my first apartment. What are the things I should pay attention to in my lease?”. If you have a topic you would like to see explored in a future article, please comment below, or add your suggestion on our upcoming topics page. Thank you to Mike for the question, and to two local landlords who sat down with me in preparation for this article.
Table of Contents
Request a Documented Lease:
Regardless of the length of time you intend to spend in your rental, having a documented lease can simplify the lives of both yourself and your landlord. A written lease provides you security, protecting you from unexpected actions, including rent increases, within the lease period.
What Must a Lease Include to be Legal:
A lease must address the following core items:
- The date range it covers
- Rent Amount
- Amount and return conditions of the security deposit
- Contact information of the Landlord and central office/avenue to request maintenance
What Cannot Be Agreed to in a Lease:
- The burden of any maintenance not resulting from the actions of yourself or your guests, cannot be shifted onto you. Basic repairs remain the responsibility of your landlord and are protected under law.
- Utilities can only be directly charged to the lessee if their individual unit is monitored by a meter.
Due to renter protections, if you have signed, or need to sign, a lease that includes any of the above conditions, those conditions may not be considered valid.
Rent: When Is It Due? Is There a Grace Period? Is There Any Issue With Paying Early?
While landlords typically have freedom in establishing rent schedules, standardizing it across their tenets makes for easier bookkeeping and standardizes cashflow.
Rent will often fall upon the first, 15th, or last of the month. While many landlords will allow for a grace period, often ranging from twenty-four hours to a week, anything behind that and you will probably start accruing late fees. My first landlord provided notice that the first day’s fee would be twenty percent of the monthly rent, and each subsequent day would be an additional thirty dollars until I paid the rent and the late fees in full. Under this structure, a few days of late fees could quickly ruin a monthly budget.
How Can Rent Be Paid?
If you are among the fifty percent of Americans looking to eliminate checks from your life, your rent may present a hang-up. Leasing from a smaller company may limit the avenues available to you to pay. Processing fees on credit cards, fear of bank-to-bank transfers, or a lack of technical understanding of platforms such as Venmo or Zelle, may require you to keep a supply of paper checks on hand. Resist the urge to pay in cash, but if you must, make sure you get a receipt, and consider requesting a text or email confirmation as well.
If your landlord allows alternative avenues of payment, make sure you understand any delays or fees they may entail. A late or short payment, because of something outside of your control, is simply not worth the fees and headache.
Maintenance Responsibilities and Response Time.
Your rent may include your utilities. Your landlord may require you to have active gas, electric, water, and sewer access at all times. When I discovered I would save money by turning off my gas service seven months out of the year, I requested permission, but my landlord would not allow it.
If you live in an area where winter exists, you are most likely required to keep the temperature above a certain point to help ensure pipes do not freeze. Make sure you know what your responsibilities are and that you are comfortable with and able to abide them.
Not all repairs fall to your landlord. It is not uncommon for some issues, such as replacing burnt out light bulbs inside the rental to fall to you. Your lease should provide a strong outline of where that line is drawn.
Right of Entry
Knowing who will be entering your property, under what conditions, and when they will enter are your rights at a tenet. Baring emergency repairs, your landlord should provide you a day or two head notice before entering your premises.
Notice of Intent to Renew/Vacate:
Landlords hate vacancies. To help keep them at a minimum, they will often ask you to renew or inform them of your intent to vacate well in advance of the expiration of your current lease. Most landlords I have rented from have asked for a minimum of 90 days’ notice and offered a discount on rent as an incentive to provide a prompt renewal. I have seen requests to inform as far as seven months prior to a lease’s expiration.
If you intend to renew and miss the deadline, you may lose the opportunity and have to vacate. If you decide to leave without providing the required advance notice, you may be responsible for the remaining rent and additional fees.
If forced to break your lease, you likely will have to continue to pay rent through your lease period. While the Tenant Resource Center does state that your landlord has a responsibility to attempt to find a new renter, and upon securing one, your financial obligation ends, the process can certainly cause you many headaches.
Work with your landlord to the best of your abilities. If you simply break your lease and run, your case may be turned over to collections, at this point renting any property in the future will become difficult.
Things Landlords Wish Tenets Would Know:
In addressing this community request, I spoke to a couple of local landlords to get a sense of what they wished new renters knew:
When to Call:
In the summer, we receive a flood of maintenance calls regarding air conditioning in our tenets homes… Air conditioning will lower your interior temperature by about 20 degrees relative to the outside. If it is 98 outside and 78 in your unit, your air conditioning is doing its job. If it is 85 degrees inside your rental, we certainly want you to call.
We can all appreciate times from our jobs where a flood of demands hit us all at once. It happens to everyone from time to time, and the onset of winter or summer are busy times for landlords. Understanding common complaints such as the difference between a failing air conditioner and a two-day hot spell can save you both some time and effort.
Simple Repairs:
A lot of maintenance hours are eaten up by simple tasks. Owning a plunger for a slightly clogged toilet, or an allen wrench to unstick a garbage disposal are simple steps you can take to save your landlord, maintenance team, and yourself a bit of time.
It’s Ok to Ask
It’s a common thing to be hesitant to ask others for assistance, to feel that our lack of knowledge, ability, or time somehow reflects poorly upon us. It easy not to want to reach out to a landlord, choosing instead not to rock the boat. Good landlords understand the value of good tenets, and many will do what they can to meet you halfway. I’ve had friend go years hanging nothing on the walls of their rental and never quite feeling like the space was their own. If you want to make a change, or need assistance with a minor emergency, don’t hesitate to ask. The worse that can happen is they say no.
Read Before You Sign:
Landlords have a large amount of discretion when it comes to the parameters of your lease. It is important that you read every word. Every time my lease is up for renewal; it includes their standard language that pet owners must pay an upfront fee. This fee did not exist for cats when I moved in, so for each renewal, I have to request an amendment to the lease stating my landlord’s acknowledgment that the fee was waived for me and I am not to be held accountable for it at any point in the future.
All landlords want your money. If you’re lucky, they might want you to be happy, realizing that a tenet that pays on time and adds to the neighborhood has value. Leases favor the landlord in the best of times. Make sure you do your part to protect your interests before moving in. Read Your Lease!