{"id":50095,"date":"2013-11-04T12:37:32","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T19:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=50095"},"modified":"2021-03-16T10:12:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T16:12:33","slug":"2013-11-04-house-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2013-11-04-house-rules","title":{"rendered":"17 Vital &#8220;Rules&#8221; Your Rental Lease Should Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a landlord, my lease is perhaps the most important document I use.\u00a0 It is the legal agreement between me and my tenant.\u00a0 An attachment to that lease, and therefore a part of that legal agreement is a set of house rules.\u00a0 The house rules are just what you think they are.\u00a0 Rules you will live by while you live in our house.<\/p>\n<h2>Basic House Rules<\/h2>\n<p>Some of the house rules are pretty basic.\u00a0 Things you would expect to find.\u00a0 Such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No illegal drugs<\/li>\n<li>Keep your unit clean<\/li>\n<li>Take the trash out regularly<\/li>\n<li>The lockout procedure<\/li>\n<li>Notifying us if you plan to be away for longer than two weeks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Some Basic House Rules That You Need To Spell Out<\/h2>\n<p>With some of the house rules, I am amazed that there has to be a rule.\u00a0 You would think this stuff would be common sense, but oh no, you need to spell it out for some.\u00a0 Things like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Every month you will pay your <b>rent first<\/b>, then utilities, then other bills.<\/li>\n<li>Even if bad things happen to you or your roommates, your rent is <b>still due<\/b> on the first of every month.<\/li>\n<li>You are responsible for getting your rent to me on time.<\/li>\n<li>You must lock your doors to prevent crime.<\/li>\n<li>We are not responsible for utility outage due to storms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Rules We Added Over The Years<\/h2>\n<p>When we first started out in this business, we had developed what we thought was a pretty good set of house rules.\u00a0 Boy, were we mistaken.\u00a0 It seems like every year we have to add a new clause or rule because we have experienced something new and unexpected.\u00a0 Who would have thought that we would have to add rules like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don\u2019t put things down the drains \u2013 any drain!<\/li>\n<li>No couch surfing\u00a0 &#8211; look up couchsurfing.com<\/li>\n<li>No candles inside.\u00a0 No grills inside!<\/li>\n<li>No inside furniture outside.<\/li>\n<li>We do not negotiate between roommates.<\/li>\n<li>If you get broken into, call the police FIRST!<\/li>\n<li>No satellite dishes without our approval.\u00a0 Otherwise there will be 47 of them on your front porch!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s funny, at lease signings when we are going over the house rules some tenants will ask \u201cDid that really happen?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I am sure as we continue in this business we will have to further add to our <a title=\"When Tenants Go Bad- 8 Tips for Dealing with the Drama\" href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/28\/tenants-go-bad-8-tips-dealing-drama\/\" target=\"_blank\">house rules<\/a> as tenants can be quite \u201ccreative.\u201d\u00a0 So for now, we call our house rules a work in progress.<\/p>\n<p>So what is in your house rules?\u00a0 Do you have anything to add to the list?\u00a0 Tell us about your experience with a comment.<br \/>\n<font size=\"-2\">Photo Credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/90493526@N00\/2567999489\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">biphop<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a landlord, my lease is perhaps the most important document I use.\u00a0 It is the legal agreement between me and my tenant.\u00a0 An attachment to that lease, and therefore [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5183],"tags":[4917,190,966,59,3073,790,569],"class_list":["post-50095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlording","tag-house-rules","tag-landlord","tag-lease","tag-real-estate-investing","tag-rental-properties","tag-rental-property","tag-tenant"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}