Signing a Non-Standard Lease

For your first rental apartment, and probably your second, you don't think about it much: you just sign the lease.

Which usually works out, because a lease is pretty much a standard form that everybody in your state uses. It says when your tenancy will start, and when it will end, and how much you will pay in rent and when. The protection for you, the tenant, is that your landlord agrees to supply you with a habitable place, and won't kick you out before the lease ends.

But then sometimes -- and usually not with your first rental -- you end up with a landlord who wants you to sign something that looks like the tax code. There are provisions for paint, and there are provisions for plumbing. And you think to yourself, "What am I getting myself into?"

Keeping in mind that I am realtor, not a lawyer. I will tell you that you shouldn't sign anything that indicates the apartment won't be habitable, i.e., don't sign away your right to hot water. But other than that, what you are getting yourself into is a level of detail that tells you a great deal about the landlord.

Possibility one is that the landlord once had a bad tenant, and was burned, and doesn't want you to do the things the bad tenant did, like paint the apartment purple and break the plumbing.

If you are a good tenant who doesn't plan to do those things, go ahead and sign the lease. You might want to have a conversation first, saying to the landlord, "Wow, it sounds like you went through the mill with your last tenant, don't worry, I have no plans to operate a restaurant out of the apartment."

If the landlord has no tolerance for sarcasm, you'll know.

Possibility two is that the landlord has a neurotic fixation on detail (read: lawyer) and is trying to draw clean, sharp edges around the messy emotional situation of someone else living in their house. Realize in this case what you're getting into, because that landlord might be nice and friendly forever, but also might feel like he can tell you the right and wrong methods of shutting the front door. If he's going to come around every week to check up on you, you can't say you weren't warned.

Comments

[foggycity]

Alison Rogers makes a good point, which is that many situations that can ruin your daily life were completely foreseeable if only you gave weight to the information you had in advance. The landlord for the apartment you've fallen in love with gives you a non-standard lease to sign. You think, "Well, I have no power here; if I want this apartment I'd better sign it." But you do have power. You can take another apartment--perhaps one you love less but one with a standard lease and with a landlord who won't ruin your quality of life later. If you sign that weird-looking lease, you can't say later that you had no idea what would happen.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Remember 'back in the day' when you could kind
of get by, living in a camper van etc? Well,
they call them RV's, now, to kind of de-seedify
the entire practice, but it was once Really That
Easy to kind of just wander around, like a
4-wheeled snail, house on your back so to
speak, a little more nomadic maybe, but a
Damn Sight Cheaper, too. Oh, so you had
to suffer a little, maybe eat a cold sandwich,
but, into every life, some rain must fall. Sob, sob, boo hoo. Better than owing 50% of your
net monthly income to someone for dwelling space...
I think a lot of this rental crap is written
BY lawyers, FOR lawyers, specifically for the
lawyer your landlord will be employing to
squeeze you for renovation costs. As a bonus
benefit of globalizationer, your landlord might
be some guy on a Big Yacht or overseas
someplace, reading a copy of Slumlord Monthly...
That camper van's looking better and better...

[NoContest]

Yep, my classic definition of a "blurb".

Also:

Don't tug on Superman's cape,
don't piss into the wind,
don't pull the mask off the ol'Lone Ranger and
you don't mess around with Slim.

Did I help?

!

[WhiteyWard]

What about the Mobile home park where we own the home and they own the earth?? They even insist on where and what we can plant in the ground. Who can visit us and when, and when our kids can be seen and when they need to go indoors...Help!!!