Peter Holland: When you rent out apartment, you sign a contract, it's called a lease. There are a lot of important things that you need to read in there. How long is the lease for?
Irwin Kramer: Who is going to make repairs if something goes wrong with the plumbing system, or the air conditioning, or heat? Is it going to be the landlord, or is the landlord looking to you.
Peter Holland: What happens to my security deposit, how much security deposit do they want?
Irwin Kramer: Who is paying utilities, does this come with utilities, or you are separately responsible for the water bill, the heat, etcetera?
Peter Holland: Does the rent increase overtime, or does it stay the same?
Irwin Kramer: How much notice in advance do you have to give, if you're moving out, and when to end the tenancy, how does it terminate?
Peter Holland: If you want to renew the lease at the end of the term, how do you do that? If you want to rent it for a year, but you think you might want to stay for another year or two years down the road, you need to make sure that you negotiate that right of renewal.
Irwin Kramer: All of these things are in the contract, and all of these things are negotiable.
Peter Holland: Never rent an apartment site unseen. You want to know exactly what apartment you are going to be moving into, and you want to walk through it, inspect it. If you rent an apartment with someone else, you are both jointly, and severally liable. And what that means is, if your buddy moves out, well, you are on the hook for all of the rent.
Steve Lovejoy: Would you be able to go after your friend, and to recoup those amounts? The answer is yes, but do you really want to have to do that? That often doesn't work too well. So be careful about who you enter into a contract with, and be careful about what the contract actually says.
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