Renting Primary Residence-what to put in lease

[Anonymous]

I am not positive but I think you can put a limit on the number of unrelated people living in the home. For a 2m house I might pay for someone to come in a do a regular maintenance check- filters, drains etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Learned the hard way: make sure they change the air filters regularly. I would buy the ones you use to have on hand. Know someone whose hvac system basically exploded when the air filters were never changed by the renters and it wasn’t spelled out who was responsible to do it.

So, I'll comment on this one and add my $.02:

OP, you have a $2mil home and presumably you want to come home to it/keep it in general good repair to sell it. So DO NOT rely on tenants to do those repairs or basic maintenance. It's not the tenant's job, and/or they don't know what needs to be done.

So put in place an A/C heating maintenance contract. Keep your yard service. Send someone to clean out the clothes dryer vent. Send someone to maintain the fireplace. Have the gutters cleaned every quarter, pay for leaf removal, whatever. Maintenance is on you and don't expect anyone else to do it. Quirks like "the leaves have to be removed from the drain everyday" are a gamble you are taking. My advice is do not take that gamble.

This is the best advice, especially if you also actually want good tenants. Some of the people responding in this thread really should not be landlords, especially because they really don’t understand the concept of normal wear and tear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We created an addendum to the boilerplate lease that specified rules unique to our property. Tenants were allowed to paint walls that were already painted but not the exposed brick, for example. Tenants were responsible for clearing the outdoor drains and keeping the yard neat. Any plumbing problem that involved a clogged pipe was their responsibility.

Tenants were required to read and initial each rule.

I would never let a tenant paint or be responsible for maintenance. When your house floods and yard/plumbing is destroyed you will be the one paying, not the tenants.

Pulling the leaves out of the drain outside their front door is not "maintenance" -- and it has to be done every day in the fall.

I don't care if they paint the walls, since they have to be repainted after they leave anyway.

Be careful with the painting. I’ve seen people say the colors need to be approved if different from the hats there and/or any painting must be done by a licensed contractor. I’ve seen tenants paint themselves and just ruin things by getting the paint all over the woodwork or using the wrong sheen in places. It can cause a lot of work. Also if a house is generally neutral then having a tenant paint dark or bright colors creates appt of extra paint work after bc those are not easy to cover up