Sign Massachusetts Banking Residential Lease Agreement Now

How can i industry sign banking massachusetts residential lease agreement

hello my name is Justin McCarthy I'm a Massachusetts attorney and today I'm going to talk to you about forming rental agreements in Massachusetts if you're a landlord and you're going to be forming a residential lease agreement you have to be very careful because the laws in Massachusetts are very favorable towards the tenant and if you make any mistake you could end up owing a lot in fines and penalties and actually having to pay your your tenants attorney costs and court costs if if you end up in a legal dispute with them so first of all I would say if you're gonna form a lease agreement and it's your first lease agreement I strongly advise that you talk to an attorney before you set anything up okay I put anything in writing it's it's really it's not uncommon for a landlord to set up his own lease agreement have the tenant stop paying bring the tenant to court and then actually the landlord leaves court owing money that to the tenant and the tenants lawyers so you have to be extremely careful and you should you should always consult an attorney before setting up your first lease agreement what you're gonna need in order to set up a rental agreement in Massachusetts are a few things the first and the most obvious is of course a lease and the lease should be fairly simple should be written in plain language anybody who reads it should be able to understand what it's saying should be about four or five pages what do you want in the lease first of all obviously you want to name the parties in the agreement okay so the landlord and any of the tenants you want to make sure that if there's multiple tenants that the tenants are jointly and severally liable for the terms of the agreement and what this means is if something happens and you need to go to court you can collect the full amount that's owed from either of the two tenants okay so let's say you rent to a boyfriend and a girlfriend and a few months into the lease the the boyfriend takes off and he's not present anymore you can't find him and the girlfriend stops paying you could bring her to court and collect the full amount that's owed from her because they're jointly and severally liable for the terms of the agreement obviously you want to put dates in there when the agreements going to start and when it's going to end is it a fixed term lease is it a month-by-month lease okay so very basic terms like that obviously you're going to want to put in the the amount of the lease when when the monthly payment is due how much the payments going to be where it's going to be sent the the the name of the of the landlord or how he wants the payment made to him or spell down on the cheque you are going to want to include in there what's going to be collected at the start of the lease okay are you gonna want just the first month's rent you know what first last first last and security deposit okay what is the tenant accompany R what utilities the tenant is gonna be paying and what utilities the the landlord is gonna pay generally the tenant pays most utilities however you want to be careful about having them pay the water and sewer bill okay if you want the tenant to pay the water bill a sewer bill you can however the rules are very strict okay on the metering the submetering you need to file a certificate with the Board of Health and the town you're renting in showing that all of the all of the plumbing was done by a licensed plumber that the that the faucets are proper faucet its proper toilets and so on it's a bit of a headache and most because of that most landlords just pay the water bill you want to mention what the what the tenant is restricted from doing okay so most most common is you prevent them from subleasing you need to state that in the lease or they'll be able to sublease restrictions on pets restrictions on smoking whatever it's going to be that you don't want them doing in the house putting holes in the wall whatever it might be you need to be careful in in what terms the the tenant needs to abide by okay it's okay to restrict the tenant from doing certain things for instance from nailing holes in the wall or from from smoking but you want to be very careful when you you make them do something other than refrain from doing something so for instance you probably don't want to put in the lease that the tenant needs to say clean the carpets before they leave or or have renter's insurance or something like that okay you could say no subleasing no pets and so on but you can't say and also you must do this and you must do that okay okay so so that's it for the lease but that's really that's sort of just one document in a series of documents that go into a lease agreement if there is a security deposit you to be very careful with how you handle it okay because if you mess up with the security deposit you violate any of the rules on this of the security deposit and you end up taking your tenant to court you could end up paying your tenants legal bills okay regardless of what the what the lease agreement says so if you take a security deposit you cannot take more than one month rent in the amount of the security deposit okay it's also very important that you you let the tenant know where the where the deposit is being held you tell them the bank's name the account number and so on okay so be very careful if you're gonna take a security deposit in addition to that information you need to give the tenant lead paint disclosure you need to it's a standardized form if you google that you'd be able to find it and you need to disclose to the tenant first of all if there's lead paint if there is like lead paint if you've done any anything to remedy the the problem or if you have no knowledge of lead paint so you need to sign it in the the tenant also needs to sign it then there's a brochure that discusses all the hazards of lead paint and it's produced by Housing and Urban Development and if you went online you could probably find that also you're gonna have to give them that brochure and you are also going to have to provide them with with a checklist so before you sign the the lease agreement or the day you're gonna sign the lease agreement and collect the money you go through the house with the tenant and you have this checklist and I use the same checklist for all my residential leases and you make note of all of the all the problems in the house or what problems don't exist so so you'll go into the kitchen yeah the window and the kitchen kitchen is broken you mark that on the checklist okay if there's damage to the oven or something like that you'd mark it on the checklist and if not if there's no damage you just check okay or a check mark or something indicating that there that there is no problem and then the landlord signs it in the tenant signs if and the advantage of having this is if there isn't a broken window in the bedroom say when you begin the lease and there is when the tenant moves out it's pretty clear that that happen while the tenant was in possession of the property so you can you'll have a much easier time deducting the cost of fixing the window from the from the security deposit if you have the checklist right but you have to provide it to them regardless okay and lastly if the if the tenant requests you have to provide the tenant with proof of insurance on the house okay so just an overview you need the lease like I said simple lease but make sure you get all the terms in there that you need to plain-language four or five page as long as is sufficient we need the lead paint disclosure telling the tenant if there's any lead paint in the house you need the lead paint brochure and you can like I said you can find it online you could probably download it and email it to the tenant but if you have the actual brochure if you can if you can give it to them that would probably be best and lastly you need to give them the the account information for the security deposit and proof of insurance if it's requested you want the tenant to have copies of everything the lease every the checklist provide them with the checklist everything that you sign everything that's part of the lease agreement make sure your tenant gets copies and again like I said in the beginning it is best to have a lawyer do all of this for you if you shop around you could probably find a lawyer who will draft a residential lease for you at a fairly reasonable price okay so don't cut corners talk to a lawyer have a lawyer draft the agreement and do the work for you and if you have any questions let me know I'll be happy to answer them for you thanks for your time take care