What odd things have you seen in rental agreements/leases?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I suspect that someone will quickly come along to tell me that what I’m going to call “odd” is perfectly normal, which is fine. I’d still like to hear from folks about things you might consider odd or inappropriate that were terms of a rental or lease agreement you’ve run across.

My fiancee and I just signed a lease for an apartment we’re moving into. I’ve rented a few different living spaces as an adult, and up until this last one, every lease I’ve signed has been somewhere between one and three pages long. So, there were two things I found unusual about this particular lease.

  1. The lease was, with all of its attachments, a total of 14 pages long.
  2. There was a term that prohibited having, among other things, a piano, a treadmill or other exercise equipment.

As to the latter point, the lease was a standard one that the owner uses for all of his properties, and I was able to get him to grant us an exemption so that we could actually have a treadmill. But I’d never run across that one before. The implication from the lease was concern about damaging the floors, so I could understand why fishtanks and waterbeds were excluded. But pianos and treadmills?

So, first, do my examples strike you as unusual? And second, do you have your own examples of unusual terms and conditions you’ve encountered?

2

I can’t comment on the clauses in your lease, but a friend of mine looked at an apartment in Maryland with an unusual clause: the original owner of the townhouse in Prince Georges’ County had died and willed his house and estate to his pet parrot. In essence, the parrot was the owner of the house and the tenant would be resposible for taking care of the bird in exchange for greatly reduced rent. A lawyer for the family managed the whole affair and had run the ad in the paper. Sadly, she didn’t take the deal, I would have done it just to have the story.

3

They may have grouped pianos and treadmills in with fishtanks and waterbeds under the implication that they could damage the building. But if you’ve ever lived under someone with a treadmill, it’s really obnoxious, and I can’t imagine living within earshot of a piano, especially if they have kids. I can understand the apartment managers telling people they can’t have them.

The only odd thing I can think of, and I’m not sure if it’s even that odd, is that I had to have a $1,000,000 (one million dollars) rider on my renter’s insurance to have a dog. It seems way to high, but it turns out it only added a few dollars a month to my premium and it protected me (and the apartment I assume) in the case the my dog bit someone. They apartment managers were very specific though, this couldn’t be an umbrella policy, it must be a rider specifically covering the dog.

Whenever these threads come up, it makes me glad I have a house. Sure it’s a lot more work and more expensive. But at least my annoying neighbors have to annoy me from 50 feet away instead of 4.5 inches.

4

I rented a place in downtown St Paul which disallowed “any musical instrument”. I ignored it and had my guitars there, but it was just so broad a statement considering that the human voice is considered a musical instrument.

5

A friend of mine subleased an apartment in which toenail clipping was forbidden, except in the bathroom with the door closed. Apparently the other roommate was extremely bothered by that sound.

6

I understand worrying about having noisy upstairs neighbors, but this building is all two-story townhome-style units, so no one is above or below you.

When the owner agreed to make an exemption for us, he did specfically say, “So long as there are no neighbor complaints.” I really hope our treadmill isn’t loud enough to disturb someone next door to us, but we’ll be as cautious as we can be!

I really love the parrot story. No way in hell would I take that deal, though.

7

That reminds me, I was looking at a place that had a ban on dogs under 50 pounds.* The logic being that small dogs tend to loud/skittish/bark all day where as bigger dogs tend to be a bit more docile.

*It might have been 30 pounds. I don’t remember, I just remember that if you wanted a dog it had to be a big dog. My mini-schnauzers weighing in at 15 and 20 pounds were already a deal breaker for that place.

8

When I was married, my wife would use the elliptical in the spare bed room, with the TV on and I could hear it in the next room over with another TV on. Granted, it was resonating through the floor joists, so if you don’t have a basement it probably wouldn’t do that and an elliptical makes a very different noise then a treadmill.
But you have to assume they put those clauses in there because of previous complaints.

It sounds like you want to be careful. I would try to keep the treadmill in a room away from the shared wall if possible and use it when the neighbors are either away or at least during the day. If you’re on friendly terms with them, you could use it while they’re home and ask if they can hear it.
I think a treadmill is more an issue when it’s the people upstairs, it’s the elliptical that seems to travel sideways as well.
Also, if you don’t have basement and the building is on a concrete slab, then I really wouldn’t be worried about it. If it’s the first floor, the sound probably won’t travel very far at all.

9

I’m pretty sure that animals cannot own property in the U.S. as they don’t meet the definition of a “person”. A trust that is for the benefit of the animal could own the property, that is overseen by a trustee.

10

I’m definitely hoping to chat with the neighbors about sound carrying in general once we move in. Underneath our first floor is the parking garage, so I’d think that would keep sound from traveling too far.

Which would be great, because perhaps then I can convince my fiancee that a ping pong table is an essential addition to the dining room area. :smiley:

11

I once looked at a place that had as part of the apartment lease a list of 10 things you had to promise to never do.

Some things were easy - like not working on the car in the yard, etc.

But #10 was the kicker - you could not have any overnight visitors of the opposite sex that were not related to you.

They also wanted to know which church I went to. When I told them none, they wanted me to go to their church with them.

I turned down the place. It might have worked if I was gay . . .

12

I’ve drafted residential leases that have been at least that long, and a few that were longer. Mind you, these were specifically custom-drafted according to the management company’s wishes; and were done using 12-point type, instead of the small print so many pre-printed “standard” leases contain. A larger type size, and the consequent paragraph spacing, will make things longer.

In addition to that though, I should point out that much of the custom-drafting was due to the management company trying to account for any contingency. These leases spelled out exactly who did what (the tenant is responsible for snow removal in front of the unit, for example), and occasionally, in what order (in case of fire, the tenant calls 911, gets all people out of the unit; and then, as soon as is practicable, calls the management company, who will then inform the landlord-owner). Pets, reporting accidental damage, who calls and who pays for contractors and repair people and under what circumstances, pre- and post-tenancy inspections and differences arising, lawn and garden maintenance, cars and RVs and parking, painting stipulations (for example, before the tenant paints the exterior of the rental house, permission in writing as to colour must be sought), even hanging pictures and posters on the wall (no nails, picture hooks only, and never Scotch tape)–these, and other matters in addition to the typical ones, were all included at the request of my client. These all made the lease longer than normal, but they did add to the parties’ understanding of the lease itself, and I subsequently never heard of any disagreements arising from these leases.

I’ve done a few of these too, and they have tended to be long. However, since the ones I’ve drafted are intended to cover everything from an apartment in a high-rise to a freestanding house, my clients expect that both they and the tenant can strike and initial inapplicable clauses (snow removal is never the responsibility of a tenant of a high-rise, for example); or clauses that have been negotiated somehow (parties may strike the “no pet” clause and write in “one (1) cat” for example).

I’ve never seen a lease that mentioned pianos (or any musical instrument) or treadmills, though. Those are new to me!

13

Which is why I included the phrase “in essence,” at the beginning of my sentence which you omitted.

14

:confused::confused: Are you sure about this order? I would think leaving the premises would come before the 911 call.

Well, at least it would in my head, landlord/management company be damned.

15

D’oh! You’re correct, and your order makes more sense anyway. I’m going off my memory of an extremely specific lease here, so I likely got confused with a few other (but non-emergency) clauses involving calling the management company.

16

After running across the piano stipulation in the lease, the neighbors at our current place have decided to take up what I assume will be remarkably short-lived careers as musicians (damn, are they lousy), so I no longer think the piano clause is weird.

Though I’m better at the piano than they are at… whatever it is they are doing.

17

One apartment I looked at had a clause in the lease requiring the tenant to provide a carpet or rug for each room except the kitchen and bathroom. I don’t remember how specific it was regarding the size or type of floor covering required, but I think it had something to do with reducing the noise in the apartment below.

18

The standard Texas Apartments Association lease (which is widely used by most if not all apartments in Texas, as well as others) runs at least to that range.

19

I once leased an apartment in a downtown highrise in Chicago; the building extended to the property line in all four directions. My lease included a rider prohibiting snowmobiling on the property.

20

Depending what type of floors are in the house, I can also see why pianos and treadmills are forbidden.

A friend of mine had a piano and some lovely hardwood floors. All was great until she moved the piano to another corner of the room and realised several years of it sitting in one spot had gradually dented the floorboards. It was only superficial, and IIRC some hard work with a sander levelled it out so it wasn’t visible to casual inspect, but it did cause some small amount of damage.

Poorly maintained treadmills that have lost their rubber foot stabilisers can also scratch the shit out of a floor.

Plus you mentioned it’s a standardised rider for all of their properties, they might have some multi-storey properties where the noise of running on a treadmill is a problem, so they’ve just put it in all of their leases.