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

[Perplexity]

This is all completely standard.

[BuckyK]

Only $10 per day if you're late? That's cheap, I'm charged 10% if I'm late on my rent.

Edit: Yeah, this is all standard.

[jba]

1 isn't that rare. there's like a 10% chance that he will sell it and a 10% chance that the buyer will actually want to live in it (usually it will be investment prop for him). so you don't really have to worry. he's just putting it in because he can.

2 never heard of that before but dont worry about it if you're paying on time

3 pretty standard for both the clause and the non-enforcement of it.

4 totally standard for the clause. he'll probably be fine if you have someone else move in, just redo the lease. he just wants to be able to approve anyone that comes in.

[TomCollins]

1) I don't think this is standard. Someone was just posting about this earlier, and the lease will transfer to the new owner in most cases.

2) Every place I ever rented from had a 5 day grace period. If you missed the 5 days, you had to pay the penalty for the original 5 days. I think you choose your battles, and this isn't one of them.

3) This is most likely a CUA provision. I've never heard of anyone REQUIRING it before, though.

4) This is pretty standard. You have to get consent of the landlord. It's not banned, you just have to make sure he allows it. You may want to see how willing your landlord is doing this by asking him off the record. As long as he seems flexible here (he probably will want to check out the person you transfer the lease to, thats all).

I think you need to pick your battles. 1 and 4 seem to be the biggest issues. Require the lease is sold with the house, if it sells. This is pretty important if you are living in a place where moving would be a huge pain in the ass. One way it could screw you is the new landlord jacking up rent a ton on you, or forcing you to move.

You may be able to put some conditions about transfering the lease (e.g. credit rating above xxx, or with deposit) or something if its really important to you. Don't bother with 2 or 3 if the other issues are important to you.

[swede123]

All this is standard, as others have mentioned. Regarding point #1 there is a huge difference between this being listed in the lease agreement and the owner actively trying to sell the house. As long as he's not expecting you guys to put up with house showings, signs in the yard etc. there is little to worry about. It might be worthwhile to just run this by the owner/manager of the property. Most likely they have no intention of selling in the near term (if they did they probably wouldn't sign a year-long lease with new tenants).

Swede

[guids]

haha....this post reminds me of how I didnt even read the lease I signed when I first moved out of my parents house.

[boscoboy]

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This is all completely standard.

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