Read the fine print, the importance of really reading your lease
Keywords: read the lease fine print, importance of reading your lease, understanding lease agreements, tenant rights and responsibilities, apartment rental fine print
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): College Rentals
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/12/04
Fine print, it’s not as magical as peanut and butter, artificial and intelligence, or God and complex. But it is certainly a two-word phrase worth its weight in ink.
For the young or the immature at heart, the important crux of critical thinking enters with our own money finally invested into something…including apartments or places for rent in general.
As a binding legal document, a lease is the basis for renting; the foundation for a yes or no on stipulated terms behind a rental between a landlord (sometimes Satan, as with Ace Ventura) and their tenant (you).
The fine print is the part of the lease about specific nitty-gritties. And it doesn’t start there. It starts at a single distinction based on time between two types of these written agreements of which we are assumed to be signatories.
One is shorter term. The other is longer term. Rental agreements are a kind of lease you could say but only as short term versions of them set for a one-month or few month period.
A formal lease is longer, including six months and up. That makes rental agreements six and under in months. You need to pay close attention to those details in either of them because these will say, ‘Not allowed pets. This is expected behaviour or is the code of conduct. And not just of the tenant, the landlord has responsibilities as well.’
‘These are the names, first, middle, and last, of this apartment’s occupants.’ And so on. Not an easy or particularly exhilarating read, but a need, nonetheless. The Devil really is in the details, especially regarding the security deposit and how the darn thing will be used up.
The security deposit typically is used for the purpose of fixing damage that happens by the tenants, which amounts to money the tenant pays up front.
But this money *is not* a payment; it is a lending. The money is lent by the tenant to the landlord “in the case that…” I hope that’s clear.
Here’s another angle. If my friend spent all his money on a newer car, and is afraid of potential damages to the car when I borrow it for a month (analogy to a rental agreement), let’s say, then I sign a contract in the fine print stipulating that I will pay x dollars upfront at the beginning of the agreement for me driving.
x is paid to my friend in the case that I damage the car with reasonable expectations of damage (here’s the critical thinking bit, right?) to that previously agreed upon “reasonable” amount of damage. If not, then the money is paid back from the car renter (landlord) to the tenant (me, the driver) at the end of the contract or the month, or whenever it is stipulated in the contract. Make sense?
There’s lots of stuff like that. You have to be savvy. I suggest using more in-depth resources by simply Googling, Binging, or Yahooing the relevant key terms for more articles and information.
Or you can always get advice from a trusted confidante, mentor, or advisor.
You could save yourself stress and a couple hundred bucks. Sorry to sound like sad, but, “Be careful.”
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com.
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