A lease agreement is an arrangement that allows a user, or lessee, to use an asset belonging to the owner, or lessor.
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A common use for a lease agreement is for the rental of property, but it can also be used for other things such as computers, vehicles, or household appliances.
The lease agreement is a legal contract, put in place to protect both the lessee and the lessor. It will include different clauses depending on the type of lease. For example, it may detail who is responsible for maintenance for a rental property, or what the deposit amount is for a leased vehicle.
A lease agreement should be in place before you begin to use any major asset you don’t own. It ensures you know the ins and outs of the agreement, and protects you in case anything goes wrong with whatever you are going to be leasing.
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A lease agreement documents the right of a person or multiple people (the Lessee) to use an asset belonging to another person or entity (the Lessor). It is used in the loan of various valuable assets, such as vehicles, computers, appliances, and (most commonly) properties.
The rental agreement form is a legal document, outlining all terms of the lease and protecting the rights of both the Lessor and the Lessee.
It is crucial that you have a lease agreement in place before you begin renting anything valuable. Luckily for you, we have devised a lease agreement template that, when filled out, will generate a lease agreement form. You will need to have certain information on hand in order to successfully fill out the rental agreement template. In order to help you prepare, we have listed below the major components that form a rental lease agreement:
Property Details - This section denotes all major information about the property in question. This includes address, general description, as well as a legal description (sketch or survey)
Landlord Information - This includes contact information for the landlord, or Lessor. Typically, this involves at least a full name, address, and phone number.
Tenant Information - This section provides the names of all tenants. On a standard lease agreement, a maximum of three tenants may be listed, but may vary depending on the property.
Terms of Residential Lease - This component embodies all particulars of the rental contract itself. This means the amount of rent due each period, the beginning and ending dates of the lease, the date the lease is signed, and the address to which lease payments must be sent. It also covers policies such as late payment and returned check penalties, subletting rules, and security deposit information.
Rights Responsibilities & Liabilities of the Landlord - The details of this section vary from lease to lease, but typically cover issues such as tax, repairs/maintenance, utilities, insurance, liability, and provision of furnishings.
Rights, Responsibilities & Liabilities of the Tenant - This section covers rights such as pets, guests, and peace and quiet, as well as responsibilities such as repairs/maintenance and utilities.
Damages & Insurance - This component deals with damages to the property - who is liable for what.
Keys - This portion details the number of keys distributed and the consequences of a tenant being locked out or losing his or her key.
Termination of Lease - This covers all aspects of lease termination. These include when a Lessor can terminate a lease, when a Lessee can terminate a lease, and how much notice must be given for both.
Lease Renewal - This section details when and how the lease may be renewed. It specifies whether or not the lease will be automatically renewed, and how long in advance the landlord must provide renewal documents.
Property Condition - This covers results of property inspection. These include general condition, wear and tear, and details that affect living conditions. These include: whether the property was built before 1978; whether any lead-based paint has been found on site; whether the property has flooded in the last three years.
The relations between a landlord and a tenant can be smooth and easy, or they can be fraught with discord and disagreement. It’s not always a personality issue; sometimes it’s simply due to misunderstandings, incorrect assumptions, or misaligned expectations. Perhaps the best way to obviate these types of issues is by writing and signing a legally binding rental agreement. This type of document organizes the terms of the lease agreement in one place and spells them out so that disputes can be minimized. Additionally, a lease agreement form will clarify both the tenant’s rights and the landlord’s rights, and it is considered a legal document. A lease agreement template is often referred to as a rental agreement form, and the landlord or property owner is sometimes called a lessor while the tenant may be called a lessee. In essence, the lessee is making a legal document to pay the lessor for the use of the property (or at least part of it).
It is usually the lessor who drafts the lease agreement template, though both the lessor and the lessee will be expected to sign it. From the perspectives of landlords and tenants alike, there are a number of legal factors to consider when signing this form. One major consideration is the type of rental agreement; it can be month-to-month, or it can be fixed-term. Both types are very common, and they each have advantages and downsides. With a month-to-month rental agreement, there is no specific time limit to the lease; theoretically, the lessor-lessee relationship could last indefinitely. Generally speaking, this type of contract ends when either the tenant opts to vacate the property and pay whatever funds are owed to the landlord, or when the landlord chooses to terminate the contract for any reason. One common scenario is that the landlord decides to raise the rent and the tenant chooses to move out rather than pay the higher rent rate. In any case, the terms of the month-to-month agreement will be spelled out in the form and will usually stipulate that a certain number of days of written notice (for example, 20 days of written notice) be given prior to the announcement of the termination of the contract.
Then there is the other type of rental agreement, which is a fixed-term agreement. Rather than allowing either party to terminate the contract at any time, a fixed-term lease agreement legally binds both the landlord and the tenant to abide by the terms of the rental agreement for a specific length of time. A one-year contract is quite common, but multi-year contracts are also possible. For landlords, a fixed-term contract means that he or she cannot raise the rent during the time of the lease; for tenants, it means that they cannot simply vacate the property and stop paying rent unless the lessee agrees to terminate the contract.
The other major consideration is the security deposit. Most lease agreements will require a tenant to pay a sum of money upon signing the lease in order to cover the landlord’s expenses if the tenant breaks the terms of the lease or damages the property. This might be financially burdensome for the prospective tenant, but it is a necessary measure to prevent financial loss for the lessee. Still, prospective lessees will want to examine a lease carefully to ensure that the security deposit is reasonable and that any fees stipulated in the rental agreement are clear and understandable.
For more information on the legal considerations pertaining to rental agreements, it is instructive to search the Internet for lease agreement forms and see what a sample lease agreement looks like. Locating lease agreements online and reading them can be very helpful when learning about the legal terms and language used in these types of contracts. By educating yourself on the legal considerations of lease agreement templates, you’ll be well equipped to enter into a rental contract that benefits you and is fair to everyone involved.
A rental agreement might sound like an abstruse piece of legal work, but in actuality it’s nothing more than a lease – something you’ve surely seen if you’ve ever been a landlord or a tenant. Usually it’s the landlord, formally known as the lessor, who composes the rental agreement (or hires someone else to do it). Nevertheless, it is important for both renters and tenants to be familiar with the main components of a rental agreement. This is because a tenant, formally known as a lessee, should expect certain elements to be included in such an agreement when he or she signs it. For all parties involved, knowledge is an indispensable asset when considering whether or not to sign a rental agreement.
Now, there are a number of ways to approach the task of constructing a rental agreement. Hiring an attorney or other legal expert is certainly one way to accomplish this, but this route might be prohibitive due to its high cost. Besides, paying a large sum of money to a legal expert might not even be necessary, as rental agreement templates often look very similar and it’s entirely possible that the so-called legal expert is actually using a standard rental contract that he or she didn’t even write. Another option is for the lessor to attempt to write up a rental agreement himself. This is probably not a smart way to save money, since this may be a legally binding document and a mistake or omission can end up causing a great deal of trouble. Probably the best solution is to locate and use a high-quality rental agreement template. Internet search engines can help you find a rental lease agreement template that fits your particular situation, and the best part is that oftentimes you can even find a rental agreement if you include the word “free” in your keyword search.
It should be known, though, that not every rental lease agreement template is necessarily going to be correct or complete. A rental agreement template is not such a great deal if it fails to include certain components. For starters, the names and all relevant contact information (address, telephone number, and e-mail address) should be somewhere in the rental agreement. Those names will be seen again toward the bottom of the document, where the lessor and lessee sign it. There also ought to be pertinent information about the property itself: where it is physically located (street address), any furniture and appliances included with the property, and any other relevant details about the property that is being leased. If any of these elements appear to be missing from a rental agreement template, then you should probably abandon that template and find another one.
In addition to the foregoing, any lease template will need to have certain financial information. In particular, there should be an indication of the expected monthly rent payment to be made by the lessee, as well as the security deposit that must be remitted upon signing the lease. Financial penalties for late payment or nonpayment of monthly rent also ought to be mentioned in the template. Moreover, a property damage clause specifying the financial consequences for damaging the leased property should be integrated into the rental contract.
A high-quality rental agreement template should leave room for some optional conditions that may pertain to the tenant. Certain questions may need to be answered in the lease such as: Will the price of the monthly rent include utilities? Are certain pets permitted on the premises? What are the due dates for rent payment? Is the standard lease agreement for a fixed term (such as one year), or will it be a month-to-month agreement? Keep an eye out for these considerations when searching for a rental agreement template.
To sum it all up, if you’re searching for a usable template for a rental agreement form, there are a number of vital components that you should expect to see in that document. Having a lease template with all of the necessary elements will help assure you that the document will serve its intended purpose and protect you from possible legal issues down the road.
Featured Study
Many of you are likely wondering why we'd put an analysis comparing public spending on professional sports stadiums and schools on our lease agreement page. It's actually pretty straightforward.
My job entails daily Google searches of "lease agreements." After doing this routinely for the last thirty months, I've noticed a through-line: a consistent and significant amount of news coverage of new leases for sports stadiums across the country. Many of these were familiar--e.g. the Oakland Raiders ongoing relocation drama--but many others were for facilities I'd never heard of.
Also, prior to entering the private workforce, at my alma mater, UC Berkeley, I conducted education policy research for two years. So, when I often think about public policy matters, it is in the context of education. Therefore, these two threads of my own intellectual curiosity led me to wonder if anyone had analyzed state spending on sports stadiums in comparison to education expenditures. While I found research papers, books, and editorials on each subject, none of those studies connected the two. That's what we tried to do here. Our goal here is not to make a political statement.1 Instead, we hope that increased transparency of knowledge elicits a more critical understanding of the public funds tied to sports stadiums in their lease agreements and a more critical civic conversation regarding the opportunity cost of investing in sports stadiums.
1To understand the political context of our study, read our article in Black Perspectives published by the African American Intellectual History Society.
What we found is that ten states have allocated public funds to fund new professional sports stadiums since 2008. This does not include state expenditures on collegiate or high-school sports facilities. While there are certainly debates we should have over, for example, how much a state spends on high school instruction versus a high school football stadium, because school (i.e. college and high-school) sports facilities are technically part of a school and have some (the size of which is, of course, debatable) educational benefit, we left them out. We therefore focused on public revenue used to finance professional sports stadiums for privately owned teams.
The ten states have allocated nearly six billion dollars for these facilities since 2008. What's troubling is that six of those states--Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, Texas and Wisconsin--have, over the same period, cut their education budgets. Those six states have allocated over $4 billion to help finance privately owned sports stadiums while at the same time cutting their state education budgets. Most alarming, three of those states--Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin--rank in the top 12 among states that have cut education budgets since 2008.
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Among the four states that haven't cut education budgets overall while approving hundreds of millions of dollars for sports stadiums, only Pennsylvania (6.3%) has increased education spending more than 5% since 2008. The other three states increases in education therefore are marginal, with two of the states--Nevada and Indiana--raising education budgets less than 2%, which when one includes inflation, isn't an increase at all.
Those who defend giving public dollars to privately owned businesses for stadiums insist that once completed the facilities bring economic benefit to the city that far exceeds the public investment. However, study after study after study has found that this is not the case. In fact, there is very little evidence that new stadiums equate to increased jobs and revenue in a city.
With that in mind, the willingness of these states to hand out billions of dollars to privately owned sports stadiums while at the same time divesting from public education raises larger ethical questions about tax expenditures.
What follows is a more detailed analysis of the six states--Georgia, Florida, Michigan, New York, Texas and Wisconsin--that have publically allocated billions of dollars while cutting their education budgets. These individual reports offer specific details on the dollar amounts invested and cut, as well as the specific projects financed. I hope you enjoy reading!
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington DC-based nonpartisan research and policy institute, the state of Florida cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by 7.8% between 2008 and 2016.
This includes a 23% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($2132 per college student), which has led to a 64% increase, nearly $2500/year, in tuition.
$342 million of that $689 million went to the Amway Center, home of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) Orlando Magic, in 2008. The total cost of the Amway Center was $480 million. In other words, taxpayers covered over 71% of the cost.
The other $349 million went to Marlins Park, home of Major League Baseball's (MLB) Miami Marlins, which broke ground in 2009 and opened in 2012. The nearly $350 million taxpayer contribution for Marlins Park amounted to just under half to total construction cost.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Michigan cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by 1.7% between 2008 and 2016.
This includes a 21% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($1233 per college student), which has led to a more than 23% increase, $2276/year, in tuition.
Yet, during the same period the state approved a quarter-billion dollars to help build Little Caesars Arena, future home of the Detroit Pistons (NBA) and Red Wings (NHL). The public contribution equals roughly one-third of the projected total construction cost.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of New York cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by 3% between 2008 and 2016.
This includes a 6% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($670 per college student), which has led to a more than 30% increase, $1841/year, in tuition.
While the 3% total cut may seem marginal, during the same period the state approved over $2.3 billion dollars of public funds for sports stadiums.
$564 million went towards the Barclays Stadium, home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets. That figure amounted to more than half the total cost of the arena. The arena's owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, has an estimated net worth of nearly $9 billion.
$643 million went to Citi Field, home of MLB's New York Mets. That amount comprised more than two-thirds of the $900 total cost of construction.
Largest of all, over $1.1 billion went to the New Yankee Stadium, nearly half the total cost of the complex. In 2016 Forbes ranked the Yankees as the fourth most valuable franchise in the entire world, placing their worth at $3.4 billion.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Texas cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by 11% between 2008 and 2016.
This includes a 17% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($1550 per college student), which has led to a nearly 25% increase, $1744/year, in tuition.
During the same period, Texas taxpayers paid $337 million to help build AT&T Stadium, home of the NFL's Dallas Cowboys. That figure amounts to over one-quarter the cost of what was, at the time, the nation's most expensive sports arena. In 2016 Forbes ranked the Cowboys as the most valuable franchise in the entire world, placing their worth at $4 billion.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Wisconsin cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by over 14% between 2008 and 2016.
This includes a 25% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($1634 per college student), which has led to a more than 20% increase, $1485/year, in tuition.
During the same period, Wisconsin taxpayers paid $250 million to help build the new Milwaukee Bucks Arena, officially named the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center. The arena broke ground in 2016 and will be completed in 2018. The $250 million public contribution amounts to nearly half the total cost of the arena.
As alarming as the data on these five states may be, they pale in comparison to two others--Arizona and Georgia. Those two states have the distinction of allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds for stadiums while also ranking in the top-5 nationally in education cuts. More troubling, the public allocations for sports stadiums by these two states are the two most recent national instances of public stadium financing, suggesting that the combination of publicly funding sports stadiums while cutting education expenditures is here to stay.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Georgia cut total state funding per student, inflation-adjusted, by 16.5% between 2008 and 2016, fourth highest in the country.
This includes a 20% cut in per-pupil funding in the state's public colleges and universities ($2151 per college student), which has led to a nearly 77% increase, almost $3700/year, in tuition.
Nonetheless, taxpayers footed over $400 million of the $622 million bill for the brand new SunTrust Field, home of the Atlanta Braves (MLB). It is worth noting that the approval of those funds occurred under ethically questionable circumstances. Vice Sports, in fact, characterized the SunTrust field deal as the "worst stadium deal in history" for taxpayers. Adding on to the inexorable heap of public funds Georgians are committing to sports stadiums, the Atlanta Falcons new stadium, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, has "close to $700 million in public money" committed to it as boasted by the Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who is the founder of The Home Depot and worth north of $3 billion dollars.
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Four other states--Indiana, Minnesota, Nevada, and Pennsylvania--have increased per pupil spending during the eight year period under consideration. However, those increases are marginal, and did not even keep pace with inflation. Of the four, Pennsylvania increased spending the most (6.3%), while Nevada's increased education spending amounts to slightly more than 1%.
Importantly, the slim increases in education broadly occlude each of these sate's drastic cuts in higher education. In that sense, these states have far more in common with the aforementioned states that have cut education overall. Here's a breakdown:
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Indiana cut per-student funding for the state's public colleges and universities by 6% between 2008 and 2016.
This amounts to $438 less per student in state support, which has resulted in a 16% increase, $1261/year, in tuition.
During the same period, Indiana taxpayers allocated $485 million to help build Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. The $485 million public contribution equaled roughly two-thirds the total cost of the arena.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Minnesota cut per-student funding for the state's public colleges and universities by 15% between 2008 and 2016.
This amounts to $1351 less per student in state support, which has resulted in a 21.5% increase, $1918/year, in tuition.
During the same period, the state allocated $563 million in public funds to help build two sports arenas. Target Field, home of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins, received $171 million of public support, more than 30% of the $555 million sticker price. The future home of the Minnesota Vikings (NFL), US Bank Stadium, will receive nearly $400 million in public funds, nearly 35% of the construction bill, before it's completed.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Nevada cut per-student funding for the state's public colleges and universities by 28% between 2008 and 2016.
This amounts to $3147 less per student in state support, which has resulted in a more than 47% increase, $2154/year, in tuition.
However, the state recently, after the aforementioned education cuts, agreed to spend $750 million, more than 37% of the $2 billion projected price tag, of public funds to build the new Las Vegas Raiders (NFL) stadium.
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According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the state of Pennsylvania cut per-student funding for the state's public colleges and universities by one-third between 2008 and 2016.
This amounts to $2234 less per student in state support, which has resulted in a nearly 20% increase, $2204/year, in tuition.
Yet, during the same period the state approved $288 million of public monies to help fund nearly the entire cost of construction of PPG Paints Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins (NHL).
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Suppose the more than $6.5 billion of public dollars spent on sports arenas had instead been invested in education. Since the clearest data we found deals with higher education, what if all that money was spent keeping tuition down at public colleges and universities? If you take each state's Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) enrollment at four-year public colleges and universities, here's what the state by state breakdown of tuition savings would look like.
Remember that this hypothetical would be a one-time expenditure. Even still, Nevada jumps out. It is important to recall that the state has spent none of the $750 million public contribution for the new Las Vegas Raiders Stadium. Nevertheless, if that money was spent subsidizing the tuition costs of the students at the state's four-year public colleges and universities, at $11,206/ student the state could cover 100% of the tuition for every student for 1.68 years. In other words, for $2,128 a student could pay for two-years of college.
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Ultimately, the issue of using taxpayer dollars to fund privately owned sports stadiums raises larger ethical questions about public expenditures. These questions become particularly important when situated within the recent history of cuts to education budgets and rising college tuition costs in most states. Moreover, in an era of incessant government austerity, shouldn't we be putting specific fiscal constraints on the lease agreements between professional sports teams and state governments? This seems especially prudent given the fact that virtually every analysis of the long term economic effects of stadiums find no evidence that cities receive anywhere near an attractive return on their investment. Cities, in fact, lose money on these investments. Most recently, a study done by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that "86 percent of economists agreed that 'local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises.'"
Considering the antitrust exemption enjoyed by sports teams and the often billionaire net worths of their owners, maybe it is time to consider laws that require owners commit a sizeable majority percentage of funding for stadiums in their lease agreements before the public has to commit any funds, or prohibits state support altogether. Moreover, if we are going to continue to divert public monies to sports stadiums, maybe it is time for sports teams to commit more real economic development to their local communities. For instance, what if all team-branded apparel had to be manufactured in the city where the sports team is based; this way, not only will the additional jobs and attendant tax revenue help make up for the loss of public funds being committed to the stadiums, but also fans will actually know that their investment in fandom can truly benefit their community. If the Raiders are going to charge you $99.99 for an Oakland Raiders Derek Carr jersey, then the least they could do is ensure that a decent chunk of that money is staying in the Town, at least for the time being.
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