That's nuts. Everything you described is illegal here in Ontario Canada! Landlords must use the standard rental agreement and all apartments (except new ones, fuck you Doug Ford) are rent controlled (max inflation or 2%, whatever is lower).
Getting politicians to do this is nearly impossible and our current conservative government is definitely trying to dismantle these rights.
They're the EULAs of real estate. Often they just put in things that aren't enforcable to scare people. I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not your lawyer but AFAIK you simply cannot sign your rights away.
However, if you can't afford a lawyer to pick that fight over what parts are enforcable if you need to, then it is effectively signing your rights away.
Definitely not my experience. Much of that 100% not legal here in NY state. If you're in the US, even small towns should have some kind of housing board or urban development. Contact them for resources. Keep this lease even if you don't plan to ever rent with this landlord so you have something to give the housing board or urban development board. If your town is large enough/proactive enough, you might even have a tenant advocacy group you can contact.
Also, leases are not set in stone. If you find a place that has a couple of things in the lease you don't care for, ask for changes to be made. Obviously this particularly landlord sounds very shady so I wouldn't bother trying to negotiate with them, but many other landlords who aren't corporations or who don't own vast swaths of homes are perfectly reasonable human beings and will change the lease if the changes are reasonable enough.
To answer your last question, I've rented from landlords who own 1-2 properties. They've been perfectly reasonable and wonderful humans - so they're still out there. My wife and I used to chill on the porch or living room and have a beer with our landlord when he'd come by to fix things or do minor seasonal maintenance.
I'm renting out my old apartment so I'm technically a landlord. Every time I see these US renting stories online I think "wow, I'm such an amazing landlord!"
Jokes aside, here in Portugal all of those things would fall afoul of legal protections, I think, including inflation control (rent updates are explicitly decreed by law every year).
The lease lists my rent and then says they can charge "additional rent" which is "all added charges, costs, and fees for the duration of this lease." So, sounds like they can just make up a number and add it to the rent and I have to pay it?
Generally they will need to be able to enumerate and justify the items that constitute "additional rent." These would be things like an additional charge for owning a pet, cleaning fees for if you (or a pet) befoul a common area, or charges for amenities like storage lockers or bike parking. They can't just charge you random sums of money.
The landlord will make a "good faith effort" to make the apartment available to me when my lease starts. Shouldn't the landlord actually do that, not just make any sort of "effort" to do it, "good faith" or otherwise?
It's not up to the landlord to decide what a good faith effort is, it's up to a court when you sue them for not making the space habitable. This is an out for cases such as natural disasters, structural or safety issues, or similar factors outside the landlord's control that makes the apartment not available.
If the unit is damaged such that I cannot live there while repairs are being made, the landlord "may" issue me a credit for the days I can't live there. What criteria will the landlord use? If they decide not to, that means I'll be paying rent for an apartment I cannot occupy?
Tenant's protection laws vary by municipality, but generally this is another instance where the criteria for causes to not issue a credit will be up for courts to decide if you contest it. Generally the reasons why they might not issue a credit is if the repair is for something you did, such as starting a fire in an apartment. Or if some crazy extenuating circumstance happens, like the whole town burns down or something.
Im the head of a LL group in our city and closely follow the largest one in our province. Something Ive learned from watching the comments in our groups is that there are two main kinds of LLs. There are the ones who go into it for a business and as such they try to do some research, but many of them learn the ropes along the way, finding out about the laws and regulations as they go. They get things sorted.
The other is the accidental LL. The one who inherited a house and didnt know what to do with it so they are renting it out. Or they moved in together and decided to keep renting out one place. They dont necessarily know anything about being a LL but they put in an ad and are surprised to find the place easy to rent - and then all hell breaks loose because they dont have a foggy clue what's legal or not or how to vet a tenant.
I wonder if any of that is enforceable. In Australia almost everything is standardised and there is nothing really that you can add to the rental agreement that is valid or enforceable.
That's nuts. Everything you described is illegal here in Ontario Canada! Landlords must use the standard rental agreement and all apartments (except new ones, fuck you Doug Ford) are rent controlled (max inflation or 2%, whatever is lower).
Getting politicians to do this is nearly impossible and our current conservative government is definitely trying to dismantle these rights.
They're the EULAs of real estate. Often they just put in things that aren't enforcable to scare people. I'm not a lawyer and I'm certainly not your lawyer but AFAIK you simply cannot sign your rights away.
However, if you can't afford a lawyer to pick that fight over what parts are enforcable if you need to, then it is effectively signing your rights away.
Definitely not my experience. Much of that 100% not legal here in NY state. If you're in the US, even small towns should have some kind of housing board or urban development. Contact them for resources. Keep this lease even if you don't plan to ever rent with this landlord so you have something to give the housing board or urban development board. If your town is large enough/proactive enough, you might even have a tenant advocacy group you can contact.
Also, leases are not set in stone. If you find a place that has a couple of things in the lease you don't care for, ask for changes to be made. Obviously this particularly landlord sounds very shady so I wouldn't bother trying to negotiate with them, but many other landlords who aren't corporations or who don't own vast swaths of homes are perfectly reasonable human beings and will change the lease if the changes are reasonable enough.
To answer your last question, I've rented from landlords who own 1-2 properties. They've been perfectly reasonable and wonderful humans - so they're still out there. My wife and I used to chill on the porch or living room and have a beer with our landlord when he'd come by to fix things or do minor seasonal maintenance.
I'm renting out my old apartment so I'm technically a landlord. Every time I see these US renting stories online I think "wow, I'm such an amazing landlord!"
Jokes aside, here in Portugal all of those things would fall afoul of legal protections, I think, including inflation control (rent updates are explicitly decreed by law every year).
Generally they will need to be able to enumerate and justify the items that constitute "additional rent." These would be things like an additional charge for owning a pet, cleaning fees for if you (or a pet) befoul a common area, or charges for amenities like storage lockers or bike parking. They can't just charge you random sums of money.
It's not up to the landlord to decide what a good faith effort is, it's up to a court when you sue them for not making the space habitable. This is an out for cases such as natural disasters, structural or safety issues, or similar factors outside the landlord's control that makes the apartment not available.
Tenant's protection laws vary by municipality, but generally this is another instance where the criteria for causes to not issue a credit will be up for courts to decide if you contest it. Generally the reasons why they might not issue a credit is if the repair is for something you did, such as starting a fire in an apartment. Or if some crazy extenuating circumstance happens, like the whole town burns down or something.
Im the head of a LL group in our city and closely follow the largest one in our province. Something Ive learned from watching the comments in our groups is that there are two main kinds of LLs. There are the ones who go into it for a business and as such they try to do some research, but many of them learn the ropes along the way, finding out about the laws and regulations as they go. They get things sorted.
The other is the accidental LL. The one who inherited a house and didnt know what to do with it so they are renting it out. Or they moved in together and decided to keep renting out one place. They dont necessarily know anything about being a LL but they put in an ad and are surprised to find the place easy to rent - and then all hell breaks loose because they dont have a foggy clue what's legal or not or how to vet a tenant.
I wonder if any of that is enforceable. In Australia almost everything is standardised and there is nothing really that you can add to the rental agreement that is valid or enforceable.