How to Type a Lease Agreement

Video Transcript

"Well, you can get standard lease agreements off the Internet for your state. You probably want to download a couple of those, take a look at 'em but, you know, a lease agreement is really going to hold up in court if it is, is is derived from one of the leases that, leases, templates if you will, that are standardized in your state. For example, a New York state lease agreement, if you try to use that in a different state, may not work correctly. So the first thing is make sure you get one that is pertinent to your state. Once you get one of those, you can then customize it, tweak it for your needs, okay? For example, you can add clauses in there for a pet, you can add clauses in there allowing the tenant to paint the unit, or to bring in other things into the unit, furniture, etcetera. You really want to have a lease agreement that nails down the term of of the rental. Is it going to be a one year? A six month? A month to month? That's very key. The second thing is you want to nail down, how much money is being charged per month. That really has to be in there. You should also nail down in your lease agreement the amount of money that's going to be in security deposit. You want to nail down what's going to happen when the person vacates? How do they vacate? Along with your lease agreement, you'll probably want to do a punch list, a walk-through list, so when you go to rent the property, the first time you meet your tenant and you walk through, you show them the property, you look at everything in the property and the condition of it, your appliances, your windows, your draperies, your flooring, etcetera. And then when the tenant exits the property, when the lease agreement is up, you would pull out that checklist. You would walk through and if anything in there is damaged, etcetera, that would come out of his security deposit, so that would be in another part, an attachment to your lease agreement. So that attachment, that document, in combination with your actual lease agreement, with those specific terms in it, that should provide a landlord a very good basis to start."