{"id":55042,"date":"2014-03-10T13:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T19:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=55042"},"modified":"2021-03-16T10:16:55","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T16:16:55","slug":"2014-03-10-what-are-your-house-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2014-03-10-what-are-your-house-rules","title":{"rendered":"What are Your House Rules?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As landlords, we have a set of house rules that go with our rental properties.\u00a0 They are an addendum to our lease and we sit with every new and approved applicant and read them word for word.<\/p>\n<p>I like to keep the rules separate from the lease.\u00a0 It just seems a bit easier to administer that way.\u00a0 But there is no reason the rules could not be an actual part of your lease.\u00a0 Either way, if you do not have a set of house rules for your rental properties, you should develop some today.<\/p>\n<h2>What are Your House Rules?<\/h2>\n<p>Some of our rules are pretty standard stuff.\u00a0 No loud music.\u00a0 Keep your place clean and free of garbage.\u00a0 No candles or waterbeds.\u00a0 No grilling within 10 feet of the building along with several other standard rules.<\/p>\n<p>It seems, however, that every year we have to add more rules because tenants just keep coming up with \u201cinteresting\u201d ways to live their lives.\u00a0 Some things are truly unique.\u00a0 Other things which I thought were common sense actually have to be spelled out.<\/p>\n<p><em>Related: <a title=\"By Request, Here are my Tenant Rules!\" href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/04\/tenant-rules-for-landlords-renters\/\" target=\"_blank\">By Request, Here are my Tenant Rules!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h2>For Example:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Lock your doors.<\/li>\n<li>If you are burglarized, call the police first.<\/li>\n<li>No inside furniture outside.<\/li>\n<li>I do not negotiate between tenants.\u00a0 I am not your mom.<\/li>\n<li>You are an adult, act like one and treat other tenants as you would like to be treated.<\/li>\n<li>Do not disconnect or disable the smoke detector.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t flush objects down the toilet.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t pour grease down the drain.<\/li>\n<li>No couch surfing.\u00a0 (look up couchsurfing.com)<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t attach satellite dishes to my buildings.<\/li>\n<li>Bad things will happen to you, your rent will still be due on the 1<sup>st<\/sup> of every month.<\/li>\n<li>Pay your rent first, then pay your other bills.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Related: <a title=\"Your Tenant Left You High and Dry (the Horror!) Here Are Your Next Steps\u2026\" href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/24\/landlord-steps-for-abandoned-tenants\/\" target=\"_blank\">Your Tenant Left You High and Dry (the Horror!) Here Are Your Next Steps\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>As I said, we read our house rules to our new tenants word for word.\u00a0 Almost every time they snicker and say \u201cDid someone really do that?\u201d\u00a0 Yes, someone really did that.\u00a0 That is why that is in the rules.\u00a0 And every year, one of our tenants will do something that will make us add another rule to the list.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder what it will be this year?<\/p>\n<p><em>So what have your tenants done?\u00a0 What have you had to add to your house rules?\u00a0 Please share with your comments.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As landlords, we have a set of house rules that go with our rental properties.\u00a0 They are an addendum to our lease and we sit with every new and approved [&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":[4917,190,966,58,59,790,569],"class_list":["post-55042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlording","tag-house-rules","tag-landlord","tag-lease","tag-real-estate","tag-real-estate-investing","tag-rental-property","tag-tenant"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55042","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=55042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}