7 Essential Things to Check Before Signing a New Apartment Lease

Most tenants approach the signing of a lease like a hotel check-in, glance over it, sign on the dotted line, grab the keys. It’s a costly mistake. Before you get in too deep with any rental, here are seven checkpoints that will put you in control before you’re locked in.

1\. Read Every Fee That Isn’t Called “Rent”

Calculating the basic rent amount is simple. However, added costs often come disguised within the fees. For instance, amenity fees, trash valet charges, technology packages, and package locker fees are automatically added to many rental agreements today. It’s not that you have the choice to pay these or not, they’re simply not part of the basic rent. Add them to your basic rent before you sign. If a $1,800/month rental comes with an extra $175 monthly fees, your total rent is $1,975. Compare that amount to similar units, not the basic rent price.

2\. Know Your Exit Before You Need It

Life is full of uncertainties. You could get transferred, lose your job or have a significant change in your family situation. Before signing a lease, check how difficult, or even whether, it is to get out of it before the agreed term. Most often, the only way is to break the lease, and the costs of breaking it vary widely between landlords.

For one, you may be required to continue paying rent until a new tenant is found, in legal terms, this is called mitigation or “re-letting the premises”. The new tenant might not move in the following month so you could end up paying a couple of months’ rent out of your pocket. This may be capped to two or three months, or it may not be limited at all. For high demand apartments in Newark NJ, a landlord might not even look for a new tenant and you would have to pay the remaining rent due.

Another solution is to pay immediately the rent for the remaining period. This could be seen simply as a discount for the loss of revenue by the landlord, or as a condition written explicitly in the lease.

A few contracts state that the tenant is going to be held liable for the rent until the agreement ends or to pay a fixed amount, like one or two months or the costs of re-advertisement, to break the lease.

And last but not least, agreements come with a strict “no assignment and no subletting” clause so the lease cannot be transferred to someone else or the apartment cannot be rented. This is the least desired scenario as most often you would simply have to continue paying the rent.

3\. Understand What “Emergency Repair” Actually Means

Maintenance clauses are more varied than most people think they are. Some leases even define what constitutes an emergency repair (e.g. heating in winter, plumbing leaks, no hot water), and stipulate exactly how soon after a request the landlord must respond to the emergency, without the landlord having to say what they consider “reasonable” or “soon” or “quickly” etc. Other leases set deadlines for all fixes, emergency or not. Others leave you at the mercy of landlords or managers whose ethics revolve around your ignorance in the middle of the night in January.

The only way to be sure is to read your lease before you need it fixed and extract a promise of a response time from the landlord for emergency situations and have that inserted into your lease if it wasn’t there in the first place. If they refuse that, you know everything you need to know about the kind of operator they are.

4\. Document everything before you move a single box

The inspection report you fill out when you move in is your best defense. Make sure it’s detailed enough, and that means going further than most people bother to.

Walk through every room with your phone and record a video, narrating as you go. Point out the scuff on the hallway wall, the stain on the bathroom ceiling, the scratch on the kitchen benchtop. Then take still photos of anything worth noting, especially in corners and along skirting boards where wear tends to hide. Date-stamp everything, the metadata on your phone photos does this automatically, but sending them to yourself in an email the same day gives you an extra layer of proof.

When you fill out the condition report itself, be specific rather than vague. “Worn” doesn’t hold up as well as “circular burn mark, approx. 2cm, on left side of windowsill.” If the landlord or agency provides the form and it doesn’t have enough space, add a written attachment and keep a copy for yourself.

Don’t forget the things people overlook: the state of any appliances that come with the property, whether window locks and door handles are functioning properly, and any existing damage to walls where picture hooks or anchors have been removed. Check under any rugs or mats left behind by a previous tenant.

Once you’ve submitted the condition report, follow up in writing to confirm they’ve received it. If there’s anything they note that you disagree with, say so in writing straight away. The goal isn’t to be difficult, it’s to make sure the record reflects reality before you’re responsible for it.

5\. Check the Rent Escalation Terms

This is more important than ever before. Urban rental markets have become highly unpredictable since last year, and some cities are showing 10-15% increases over a year (Zumper National Rent Report). If you’re planning to stay put, you want to be clear about whether your lease quantifies how much rent can go up at the time of renewal, or if it’s fully up to the landlord.

For example, when looking for apartments near transit, proximity and the availability of building amenities can drive market rents $50 or more per month higher than in a building even on a neighboring block, which makes it worth your while to basically know what you are paying now and what your renewal could be.

Be on the lookout for an automatic renewal clause. Some leases roll you into a new full-year term if you haven’t given formal notice 60 days before expiration. It’s easy to let that date slip right by, but it’s not easy to unravel the expense if you do.

6\. Find the Right of Entry Clause

You deserve your privacy in your apartment. Your safety is covered by the warranty of habitability; your actual peace and quiet is covered by the covenant of quiet enjoyment.

Almost every lease has a right of entry clause. What you want to see is language that requires 24-48 hours’ notice for non-emergency entry into your unit, inspections, repairs, showings to future tenants. If the clause doesn’t mention notice or has lots of loopholes you should raise an eyebrow before signing.

7\. Clarify the Pet and Guest Policies Completely

Make sure to get all the details in writing if you plan to have pets: the monthly pet rent, one-time deposits, any breed or weight restrictions, and whether deposits are even refundable. These things vary widely and none of it counts if it’s not in the lease.

Guest policies are less immediately obvious but still really important. Some leases say that any non-tenant staying in the unit for more than 14 consecutive days is considered an unauthorized occupant. If family visits often or your partner is around a lot, that clause could be a headache.

A lease isn’t adversarial by nature, most are fairly standard. But the ones that aren’t standard almost never announce themselves. Read it like it will be enforced, because it will be.