I’m presently living in an apartment, and my girlfriend would like to stay there me for extended periods of time. Naturally, I’m concerned that doing so may constitute a violation of my lease, but I’ve got the lease in front of me and it doesn’t appear to say anything about a maximum length of time a guest may stay, et cetera.
Since I’m rather paranoid, my first thought is that I’m reading it and just not recognizing it, so that’s my question. Presuming such a clause exists, how might it read?
Additionally, presuming such a clause does not exist, where would I look to see if state law provides some kind of default time limit?
Do note I’ve already asked the apartment manager if there’s anything I need to do about guests other than get them an overnight parking pass for any vehicle they may have, and he said no, so it doesn’t particularly seem like they care, but I’d like to make sure, since North Carolina doesn’t require cure-or-quit notices for lease violations.
There’s no guarantee of guest clauses in a lease, if you can’t find one there probably isn’t one. A lease is a contract obviously and in legalese, but you will definitely see the actual word “guest”, “visitor” or something like that, there’s not some fancy secret terminology to refer to guests in a lease that would make a native English speaker totally unable to recognize it as a guest clause.
Many land lords do want persons that move in as a cohabitant to be written into the lease, though, for various business/legal reasons. One reason would be that if a tenant’s boyfriend/girlfriend moves in and lives there long enough in many states they will automatically accrue tenancy rights whether you’ve got them on a lease or not, and it’s much better to have persons like that signing a lease so you can make sure they are fully subject to its provisions than to essentially have them squat themselves into tenancy status.
Just as many don’t care, and most wouldn’t consider a frequent guest a cohabitant generally if it really is just frequent stay overs and not wholesale moving in.
Rental agreements that I’ve seen (apartments in various California cities) typically seem to include a term saying that overnight guests are limited to 14 days per month.
A legal notice that the tenant is in violation of one or more clauses of the lease, what that violation consists of, and how long the tenant has to either rectify the situation of vacate the premises.
Maybe it’s just me, but in all the apartments I’ve lived in, the leasing company has not had much information about my visitors / guests. My then-bf even lived in my one-bedroom apartment after graduating college, until my lease was up and we moved into a larger place.
I’ve lived in larger complexes though, so perhaps that’s why. If you are in a <10 unit complex, I can see where the landlord might have more knowledge about your activities.
