Please! Please Lease me, (Like i Lease You!)

Oh Good Lord!  The lease is a long, dense, dull document.
Or is it?
Dull or not, it is what we are all agreeing to.  Even though there is a ton of fine print, we don't want to pull anything on you.  So let's take some of the terms of the lease and be sure they are clear.

We also want you to know some of the reasons for some of the terms.  Pretty much everything in the lease is there because someone, at some time, did something that was, like, "You are KIDDING!"

That is how lease terms are born.

Like pets, for instance.  We love our pets and know you love yours.  We also know they do damage, like scratching doors and floors, stains and smells.  and Fleas.  But here is one that you may not have thought of.
Pests.  We had a case where the tenant put us through the wringer about mice in the house.  Well, when we looked we saw that her dog spread his food all over the kitchen floor.  Mice are not finicky. And dog food is a big treat for them.
So there is the tenant feeding the mice more than they can even eat, and upset over the mice.
Result: the pet clause.

How about the lease ending at noon 3 days before that end of the month?  That is a clause from long experience of housing providers other than us.  Before that clause, tenants would stay until midnight of the 31st (or even 2 or 3 in the morning) packing up and leave the house not even clean.  It was impossible to have a nice, clean, freshly-painted home for the new tenants.  We need time to clean up the home, maybe do some painting and repairs before the new occupant moves in.  For residents who renew their lease that 3 days is added to their new year.  So it comes out in the wash.  "The annual rent is based on an average of 12 months of 30.15 days each. When lease terms renew, the last 3 days of the renewal month will be included at no additional cost."

There are a lot of other lease terms we want to explain.  Some will be in other posts on this blog.
We want this to help you now and in the future when you are looking at your next rental.