Speaker 1: Want to make sure that your rental lease agreement is rock-solid? Then watch this video to learn five key lease clauses that you must include in your next rental lease. For the best landlord tips and tricks, stay tuned to our channel, subscribe, and hit that bell to be notified every time there's a new video each and every Wednesday. So when was the last time you reviewed or updated your rental lease agreement? Hopefully it was within the last year or two. Having a really comprehensive lease is so important and it helps avoid problems down the road because you've spelled out everything as clearly as possible. What I want to talk to you about today are five clauses that we feel are really critical to make sure that you include so that you protect yourself as the landlord. Hi there, my name is Sue Ritchie. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm the co-founder and broker of Ritchie Property Management. We're a residential property management firm and real estate brokerage in the northern Virginia area. So let's get to it. Clause number one, pets. So most of our tenants have a pet. Two-thirds of the population has a pet, so it's very likely that your tenant will come with a pet. And pets are okay as long as you have clauses in place that protect you and outline damage, etc. that the pet might cause. So first of all, you want to make sure that you have a clause in there that says there are no unauthorized pets. And if there is an unauthorized pet, what happens? So first of all, you can impose a fee or a fine if you find that the tenant has a pet that was not on the lease, that you didn't screen, and that you didn't approve. So you can impose a fine and you can also add on an inspection fee. So you can tell them that first of all, you violated the lease, so there's a penalty. And then we have to come back now and do an extra inspection because we need to inspect for any pet damage. So if you want to know more about pets and your rental property, we've done a lot of videos related to pets and I've shared the links below, so check them out. So clause number two is waiver of subrogation. This one might not be as familiar to most people, but basically what this means is this, and I need to explain this better with an example. So let's say your tenant gets hurt at the property. Let's say they they slip down the stairs and they get hurt and there's an insurance claim. And then eventually the tenant says, you know what, I'm not gonna go after the owner. I want to stay here. I shouldn't, you know, it was a mistake. But maybe that maybe the insurance company says that that reeling should have been fixed. You give your rights to us, basically subrogating your rights to make a claim to us, and we as the insurance company will go after the landlord. By having a waiver of subrogation in your lease, that disallows the tenant from turning over the rights to the insurance company, and that is a protection for you as an owner. So make sure to look at that, read it, and really understand it, and think about including that in your lease. So clause number three is access to the property. This kind of seems like an obvious one, but it's one that you should spell out very clearly because sometimes tenants don't want to allow you into the property. They can always, they make excuses, and oh it's not a convenient time, or I have company, or whatever. Basically what you want to do is put in the lease some sort of time frame by which you need to give notice. So for example, 24-hour notice is fairly common. You might want to say the owner has the right to enter the property given 24-hour notice to the tenant, something like that. So you need to get in there for some sort of emergency. Maybe you have to check on something, maybe you want to update, whatever. You definitely want to get in there for inspection. So you need to make sure that you have clear time frames and notice time frames that you can enter the property. If you have any lease clauses that you've used with any of your rental properties that have been particularly helpful, we would love to hear about them. So share them below in the comments. So clause number four. This is about lease renewals. When the tenant lease is coming to an end and it's going to turn over, you really want to try to lock them into another lease for a specified term, generally a year. But what you don't want to do is have it just sitting out there kind of on a month-to- month lease because that leaves you sort of open to just sort of just the unknown. They could end the lease in the winter and then you could be at a horrible time of year to try to re-rent it and be dealing with months of vacancies or having to reduce the price to much less than the market just because it happened to be at a long a wrong time of year. So on a lease renewal you want to try to lock that tenant in to at least another year. And so here are a couple ways you can do that. First of all, you want to discourage the month-to-month lease for the reasons that I just mentioned. And one way to do that is to say, okay, if the lease ends, the year lease ends, and generally they'll automatically turn into and roll over to a month-to-month lease in most leases. If that happens, then the rent will increase by X percentage. And you want to make that percentage a pretty high number because the higher it is, the less likely the tenant's going to want to pay that and they will be more willing to sign a one-year lease at a more reasonable closer-to-market type of rent. You also want to be careful how much you put in there because you can't put a ridiculous number in there because it won't fly in court if you ever have to go to court, but also the tenant's just plain just not going to pay that. So something reasonable to discourage the month-to-month, but also if it ends up they have to be month-to-month, then you at least are getting a little bit of a premium on the rent. Also, check out our videos on the disadvantages of a month-to-month lease, and I put that link below. Okay, clause number five. This is about jointly and severably liable. That's a mouthful, but it's an important clause, especially when you have multiple tenants and multiple unrelated tenants. So let's say you have three roommates. Basically what this clause says is that when one is liable, all are liable. So let's say, let's talk about rent. Use the example of rent. Each of them pays a third of the rent, and so let's say two of them pay and one of them doesn't. All of them are still liable for the entire rent. Also, if something happens, they or say a guest of theirs violates the lease, all of them are liable. So it's not just he didn't pay, or he's late, or this or that. Collectively, they're one unit. They are jointly and severably liable for any lease breaks, lease violations, whatever. So look into that one, read it, understand it, and that's a really important one to include in your lease. So now you know five important clauses that you really should consider when putting together your lease or adding to your existing lease. But these lease clauses are not the only thing that are important to a lease. There are other things such as disclosures and other addenda that are important that you might want to consider adding to your lease, if not now, at some point in the future. You may need them when situations change. So I've put together a list of important addenda and disclosure that you can download. The link is below, that you again may want to include in the future when the situation arises. So if you like this video, let us know by liking it below, and please subscribe to our channel, and share it with other landlords that would appreciate this sort of information. Thank you again for watching, and we'll see you in the next video.