Archive for the ‘lease clauses’ Category

Make Sure You Have a Good Lease for Protection Against Bad Tenants

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

There are two common types of leases: 1. year-to-year lease and, 2. month-to-month lease. You may think that you are locking in a tenant for a year, in a year to year lease, but you are also locking yourself in, and it is much harder to remove a tenant with a year to year lease.

The Value of a Month to Month Lease

My policy is to use a month-to-month lease whenever possible. This way, if you have a tenant that you want to get rid of, it’s easier to do. These are tenants who are disturbing the neighbors, they don’t take care of the place, or they consistently pay late. Just cancel the contract and the bad tenants must be out in 30 days. No court fights, no mess.

Modify Your Lease

Feel free to modify a lease contract to make the tenants behave the way that you want them to. Nothing is set in stone. It’s your contract. Mold it into something that works.

For example, I found my tenants making oil changes and auto repairs in the driveway of one of my properties. I didn’t want to encourage that type of activity, so before the next tenants move in, I just added a sentence to the lease contract saying that those things are not permitted.

Some of the key components of my lease include:

• tenants are responsible for paying utilities (electricity, gas and water). If the landlord pays any utilities you are encouraging the tenants to be wasteful;
• tenants cannot paint or make any significant changes to the landscaping without permission;
• no smoking is allowed inside the house;
• and, tenants must maintain outdoor plants.

How to Be a Guest on Radio Shows

Guest Fixer-Upper Article on "Gather Little by Little" Blog

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

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I encourage you to check out my guest article entitled Making Money in Real Estate with Fixer-Uppers at gatherlittlebylittle.com.

I also direct your attention to another excellent article at BiggerPockts.com entitled Managing Tenants Part 1: 5 Favorite Lease Clauses by Connie from conniebrz.com. The article has clauses that you can plug right into your contract and great observations, like, “A strong lease depersonalizes the landlord/tenant relationship-you no longer need to rant and whine and threaten. Simply point to the lease-The Lease Says So, therefore it must be done.”

Info on Terry’s Book

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