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Articles & Books From Laurence Harmon
Article / Updated 10-27-2023
Dozens of federal, state, and local laws govern the residential rental industry and the landlord-resident relationship. All of these laws are important. The following calls to your attention ten important laws for you to know and follow when you're a landlord.
The Fair Housing Act
The Fair Housing Act prohibits you from discriminating against applicants or residents based on any of the seven protected classes:
Race
Color
Sex
National origin
Religion
Handicap
Family status
The Fair Housing Act establishes only the minimum protections.
Article / Updated 10-27-2023
Residents often need or want to take on a new roommate, sublet the rental unit, or assign their rental contract to someone else. To deal with these types of situations, consider this advice when you’re a landlord:
Require that all prospective roommates be screened and added to the rental contract.
Prohibit residents from subletting their rental units.
Article / Updated 10-27-2023
How you choose to structure your business as the landlord depends in part upon your willingness to share its future and yours with others. Forming a corporation is a fairly complex legal endeavor that involves the following steps:
Choose and register a name for your corporation that complies with state requirements.
Article / Updated 08-28-2023
The Internet is an exceptionally popular and productive medium for residential advertising, because many people begin their search for apartments online. However, posting advertisements and listings online is so easy that you need to be particularly vigilant in complying with fair housing law in all of your online advertising.
Article / Updated 07-10-2023
When landlords fail to maintain habitable and nuisance-free rental properties and fail to remedy serious issues raised by residents, several consequences may follow. However, for you to be held legally liable and for residents to have a right to take recourse, the following five conditions must be met:
The issue makes the resident’s premise uninhabitable or a significant threat to the resident’s life, health, or safety.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-20-2022
Being a landlord certainly sounds easy. All you have to do is line up responsible residents, maintain the property, and count your money as the rent rolls in, right? Actually, no. Owning and leasing residential real estate requires that you comply with a host of federal, state, and local laws. Certain residents may complicate your life by taking legal action against you or forcing you to take legal action against them.
Howdy, landlord! Get on the right side of the law with DummiesLandlord's Legal Kit For Dummies contains all the resources landlords need to unpack the legal side of renting properties. Inside you'll find worksheets, templates, and friendly explanations that will help you find success. Once you have your property and your tenants, you'll need to make sure you operate within your rights, complete all the necessary admin, and handle taxes in an accurate and timely way.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Every residential rental contract, whether it's a lease or a month-to-month rental contract, contains an implied warranty of habitability. In other words, even if not included in the contract, you, the landlord, are obligated to your residents to provide living space that's fit for human occupancy and complies with state and local building, health, and safety codes that materially (significantly) affect a tenant's health and safety.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
As a landlord, you can choose to document your arrangement with renters using a lease or a rental agreement. You should know what each of these is and which is best for any given situation.
All enforceable contracts, including leases and rental agreements, have three requirements:
Offer: One party offers the other something in return for receiving something else.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Some unsavory landlords treat security deposits as another source of income that’s theirs for the taking. In the eyes of the law, however, a security deposit is actually the resident’s money that the landlord holds in trust for the duration of the lease. Most states restrict landlord use of security deposits to only three or four purposes, including the following:
Compensation for unpaid rent
To repair damage to the rental unit, excluding ordinary wear and tear, caused by the resident or members of his household or guests
To restore or replace property in the unit, such as furniture and furnishings or other items of personal property (including keys) according to terms of the lease, excluding ordinary wear and tear
To clean the rental unit, so it’s as clean as it was when the residents moved in
To recover any portion of the security deposit used by the resident as payment for the last month’s rent
Landlords can withhold from the security deposit only amounts that are reasonably necessary to remedy these damages.