The biggest mistake of all, which is buying a store-bought lease or one free off the internet, is trying to modify that. I guarantee you that those leases are going to favor the tenant. This lease will favor you, the owner.
It’s very important that you do not use a store-bought lease. This is one of the concepts I want to get across. We do not have a store-bought lease that has all kinds of protections and things in there for the tenant. This here has a lot of protections in there for you, the owner. I highly recommend either you use this lease or, if you have the funds, pay an attorney to help you out.
Plain Language Lease
Let’s go through the lease page by page. I’ll point out some of the key important items so you understand them. First and foremost is the title of it. In this case it’s called The Pennsylvania Plain Language Apartment Lease. I would highly recommend that you use what’s called a plain language lease. You could obviously change this to be your state.
If you’re doing mostly houses, you would change it to ‘House Lease’ or just take ‘Apartment’ out and call it a ‘Lease’.
Plain language is written so the average person can understand it. It’s written by lawyers, but it’s written in such a way that things are done in a fairly ordinary type of language. It’s not a lot of legalese. It’s not a lot of technical language that you’ve got to learn. Judges certainly like a plain language lease.
I highly recommend that you do that for two reasons:
1) Judges like plain language leases. It shows that you’re trying to enhance or improve the communication process.
2) The tenants can read it easier and hopefully understand it easier. It should make your life easier if you use a plain language lease.
At the very top there is a disclaimer saying that this is a lease obligation. It’s a written obligation. It’s important that the tenant understands it and reads it carefully. It’s not that important, but it’s a disclaimer to say that the tenant didn’t know what it was.
