Aurggg!

We are starting over for the rental house. We have been working all week on getting the deal sealed, and we did not get the lease until Thurs. That was annoying in itself since we were waiting for it since last weekend. Mike reviewed it on Thursday at work at quickly became agitated.

First of all, the lease was poorly written. It had language about "broken promises" all over it. We have never seen that before on any legal document. On the section about security deposits, it said that if the house is sold during the lease term that they could "give" the deposit to the new owners. There were sections that were basically indecipherable. Mike had sent our mark ups and revisions to the owner and hashed it out last night. There were a couple of real major sticking points on it. He first did not want to include "The parties agree that the laws of the state of NY shall control the interpretation and enforcements of the provisions of the lease." That is so we can not sue eachother in South Dakota, etc. Mike thinks he realized that the laws protecting tenants in NY state were strong. I think he finally got him to agree about it.

Here are the deal breakers for us. In the repair section, he wanted us to agree that we are responsible for the first 400 dollars of any repair. What a load of crap! I am willing to admit if I break something, but 400 dollars is not minor. What if a pipe burst in the 6 months we are there or the roof leaks? That is not due to our wear and tear. He acted as if he would not make us pay for that, but when it comes down to it people are weird about money. It is not worth the potential conflict in my mind. He is the home owner, so he should assume the risk of things breaking (unless we are destructive). I am not in the mood to sign a lease and worry about anything happening! The other thing sticking point made us feel he was unreasonable so we walked away. There was this huge (and ugly) entertainment center sitting in the living room. We asked the realtor if it could go, and she said he would take care of it. The renters he had before did not care and let it stay there. Flash forward to the lease. It said we were responsible for moving it, and we had to hire movers to move it in and out of the room (and we were responsible for any damage). As far as I am concerned, that really is not our responsibility. What if the movers damage it? Will our security deposit get sucked dry to pay for it? At one point he told Mike that we could hire the movers and he would watch them, but it is just so stupid. Those types of things gave us a bad feeling, so we walked away. So today we are going back to the drawing board!