Setting up a Lease Agreement

Renting out single family homes is a great way to make some extra money. And in many cases, if you have enough properties you can make a good living this way. But before you start renting your homes without a contract in place, you need to think again. Each tenant that you deal with should be required to sign a lease agreement. This will not only help to protect you, but it will do the same for the tenant as well.

Setting up a lease agreement is something that new real estate investors often times have trouble with. After all, this is bit different than most agreements that beginners are used to dealing with. The good thing is that once you settle on one basic lease agreement, you can use it time after time.

When setting up a lease agreement you need to make sure that you have all of your bases covered. Remember, if you make even one mistake it could come back to harm you later on down the line. You would be much better off doing everything right the first time so that you do not have to worry about future problems.

There are many websites that offer basic lease agreements that you can print out, customize, and use with your tenants. If this does not suit your needs, why not look into talking to a lawyer about this? They will be able to draft an agreement for you to use. You may have to pay them for this service, but it will surely be well worth the time in the long run.
Once you have your lease agreement in place, the next step is to present it to potential tenants. In many cases you may need to make some changes here and there. Just because you think that your lease agreement is perfect does not mean that the tenant will like every last detail. But before you go ahead and change just anything, make sure that you know what you are doing. After all, if you plan on making changes on the fly, what was the point in having a professionally written lease agreement in the first place?

As you can imagine, you will want to make sure that the lease agreement suits the needs of both you and the tenant. If you attempt to force them into something that they do not want to do, you are just going to make problems for yourself in the long run. And of course, if you make too many changes to suit the needs of the tenant, this could once again cause issues. Your main goal should be to draft a mutually agreed upon lease agreement.

Customizable fields in any lease agreement include things such as the length of the lease, utilities that need to be paid, price, etc. This is all based on the type of property that you are renting, what you are trying to accomplish, and what you and the tenant are comfortable with.

Overall, setting up a lease agreement is one of the most important aspects of investing in homes to rent out. If you skimp in this area you are tempting the real estate gods. Instead, put together a solid lease agreement from day one, and use this time and time again as you rent out your properties. Even though you will have to make changes along the way, once you have a basic format in place, you will never again have to stress out over this. And as you can imagine, keeping stress and potential problems to a minimum is very important when it comes to real estate investing.