Milwaukee Lease length

[Kevin Auyong]

I've had a few tenants whose leases ended in Nov or Dec which was a bad time to try to get new tenants.

Going forward I wanted to end leases in Feb rather than those months to avoid those months so maybe something like Dec 2020 to Feb 28, 2021 so that would be a 15 month lease.

My Property manager told me that was illegal and no lease could be longer than a year.
Is this true?

[Marcus Auerbach]

Kevin your PM is mistaken. I used to concern myself with the issue, but I found it's not worth it. Our lease converts after a year to MTM and if it happens to expire very rearely had I tenants move out in the middle of winter - they rather stay a bit longer and move in spring. So it's kind of self regulating.

Another myth that I keep hearing is that is illegal to terminate a lease during the winter months. There is no state code that prohibits that; except if you put a clause in your lease.

Our goal always is to attract and retain long term tenents that just coast for years on a mtm lease. We put deliberate effort into this, from remodeling to not raining rents, the cost of a turnover is just too high.