Michigan Lease Agreement: What Is It?
Rent is a wonderful system, but it’s full of pitfalls and worries for both landlord and tenant. Alleviation of these woes rides very much on how you draft your lease agreement. Here are a few tips for ensuring your leasing process goes as smoothly and undramatically as possible.
Make tenants aware of legal limitations
. Under Michigan law, if you withhold any part of a tenant’s security deposit, you must send that tenant an itemized list of damages within 30 days of his or her vacation. The tenant will have seven days to dispute this notice. If he or she does not do so within seven days, he or she loses that chance to win back the security deposit.
Make sure the property’s address is on the lease
. This seems like a nobrainer, but you’d be surprised how often it is forgotten. Think about it this way if you have a dispute involving, say, damages to the property, and you have no document to prove that the lease applies to that property in particular, winning a court case will be a whole lot more difficult.
Make it clear what you expect of tenants.
Your tenants need to know the rules of the game. If you don’t want your tenants making a lot of noise, define your limitations in the lease agreement. If you don’t want to permit pets or heavy redecoration, make this absolutely clear.
