Important Clauses to Add to Your Lease

In 2018, a standard lease was introduced, and every rental in Ontario must use that lease. But there still are some very important things that you want to have in that lease.

One Lease

If you’re renting to students, you want all the students on one lease. If you’re renting to four people make sure they’re all on the one lease, that way if one of them bails early then it’s the other tenants’ responsibility to either find another person to take over their rent or they have to pay that rent.

Rent Guarantor

If you can’t get them to all go on one lease, you want to have the parents guarantee the rent amount. Students typically don’t have much money coming in so it is reassuring to know that the parent will pay the rent if needed.

No Smoking

You definitely want to put in the lease that no smoking, whether its cigarettes, pipes, cigars or marijuana, is allowed in the house. You also want to put in that they’re not allowed to grow marijuana plants in the house. All these things will seriously impact your resale value of the home.

Utilities

With utilities, you want to put in the lease that the students are responsible for paying utilities. I can tell as soon as I can go into a student rental who is paying the utilities. When I walk in and no one is home yet every single light is on in the house and the TV’s blaring, I know it’s the landlord paying. Other ones, I walk in, every single light is turned off and there are post it notes all over the place saying “please turn off the lights”. That’s when the students are paying for it.

Get in touch with us if you want a sample of a great lease.