Help me not get owned when I rent a house for 1year (long)

[qdmcg]

Hi,

I thought I'd draw on the wealth of 2+2 knowledge and experience here. I am a 20 year old college student, and am renting a house for 1 year this August very close to where I go to college in Pittsburgh, PA. I am living in it with two friends, so we'd be splitting the rent 3 ways.

Things to keep in mind:

Houses in this area are pretty high in demand (due to proximity to my school). All three of us personally know the people living there now (sports team -> house is generally passed on as people graduate). They did not know that they would be leaving until around the middle of May, which is why our lease is still not signed. Having said that, these houses are still in pretty high demand and I'm confident that if we don't sign the lease or take too long signing it the landlord will have someone else lined up to take it from us.

There are a few things on the lease which I find questionable. The lease was also looked over by a family-lawyer friend of one of my future room mates.

1. It says in the lease that our landlord has the right to sell the house at any time during the lease, and that if he does decide to sell the house, we would have to vacate the property within 60 days. We aren't paying rent upfront, so we wouldn't lose any money, but we would be stuck without a place to live. Is this standard in a rental contract? I assume that the guy has been renting out this house for >5 years, and honestly no one lives on that block besides college kids, so I really doubt that he would ever want to sell it. However, I wanted to see if this is normal.

2) If the rent is late, he charges $10\day. I don't foresee us having trouble paying rent (our parents are paying for all of this), but is this standard or something I should bitch to the landlord about?

3) He requires renter's insurance. However, my friend who lives there now claims to have no renter's insurance. Is this just something he has to put into the lease to cover his ass? Also, rental insurance isn't really a big deal either way, just wondering.

4) Under the stipulations, it says this about leasing:
""Without prior written consent of LANDLORD;

A. TENANT will not transfer this LEASE to another. This is commonly called an assignment.

B. TENANT will not lease all or any part of the LEASED PROPERTY to another. This is commonly called a sublease."

This is definitely something that bothers me. Subletting, AFAIK, is incredibly common. Should I demand something in writing, allowing us to sublet? There's a good chance that 1-2 of us won't be living there over the summer, and it would be very easy to find someone to live there and pay rent while we are gone.

Keep in mind that I don't want to piss this guy off too much to the point that he rents to someone else.
TY OOT