Landlord Question and Answer Forum

Hi guys, new to the forum and new to landlording. I have a situation that someone will surely /facepalm, but I'm trying to rectify it. My husband has two houses that over the years he has rented out off and on. He's pretty casual and all renting has been done as a verbal agreement, never anything written. When tenant 1 moved in about 2 yrs ago, it was a verbal agreement. She paid rent and occasionally they would agree that she could pay for repairs or fixes in lieu of rent. Sometime 8 months ago she stopped both making any type of repairs or paying rent, so far as I can tell. Her excuse "Nobody asked her for rent"! She recently complained about damage to her kitchen window done by some exterior work we were having done on the house. She refused to let the person doing the work to make any repairs to the window and said she would get her own quote. This was near the beginning of March and the start of my involvement in managing the situation. She has not had the window repaired as of yet. I have someone who can repair the window for less than her formerly agreed upon rent, which I would like her to pay for. I would, also, like to put her on a month-to-month formal lease and raise her rent by $100/mo in addition to having her pay for this repair. Should I build this specific repair into the lease or have a separate document?

First of all, I wouldn't sign a lease contract with a tenant like period, I'd send her a non-renewal notice and get her out of there and get a better tenant in the rental unit. If you really want to keep her around for some reason, then sign a lease contract that has the repairs built into it.

Posted by Renee R, MD on Tuesday, May 3, 2011