Usually when we think about landlord and tenant rights, we think about how the law seems a little bit skewed towards tenants over landlords. This turns out to be especially true when speaking about giving tenants the benefit of doubt, and at times even extra rights outside what is outlined in the law, by a judge in certain situations. But where exactly do landlords stand in all of this? Let’s talk a little bit about the most important rights landlords possess at the time of being in a lease agreement with a tenant.
1.- You can ask for as much as you want.
As a landlord, you are entitled to ask for as much money for your property as you want. This is something completely permitted by the law, and you can go as low or high as you desire. However, it’s not wise to go way too high or way too low – we will provide you with advice in regard to this, usually leaning to asking for more at the beginning, and then work it out with the tenant from that. As well as paying mind to market feedback in order to help you decide on a good starting price. Remember you CAN ASK for as much as you want, but you CAN’T FORCE anyone to pay as much as you want. So, sometimes it boils down to negotiating in good terms.
2.-You can set your own terms for the lease agreement
When entering into a lease agreement with a tenant, you have the right to set your own terms for the use of your property AS LONG AS they don’t enter into conflict with what is stipulated by the law. It’s also really important for you not to violate any of the anti-discrimination statutes that the law stablishes (which are ever expanding in different ways from state to state). One way to avoid falling into this when evaluating for possible tenants is to keep your focus on non-subjective aspects, and making your case from them, such as credit history, when trying to filter out potential tenants that have a heavy criminal record for example. You also need to keep in mind that the type of tenants your property will bring in will definitely depend on its level of attractiveness. When helping you find a tenant, we have a very specific screening process that we follow, designed to take all of this into consideration so we can help you find the best option.
3.- You can evict tenants for non-payment of rent and sometimes non-money related situations
The law states that if a tenant does not pay rent, he/she can be subject to eviction by their landlord. It is really important to pay mind to other types of payment besides the official rent amount when considering this option. For example, utility bills can be considered as a form of rent. If tenants are obligated to pay for these according to the lease agreement, their non-payment can be used as cause for eviction. This holds up even if the lease contract has been renewed or still has a longer period of time remaining before it ends. In our case, one of our lease clauses specifically states that non-payment of utilities is considered non-payment of rent and this can be cause of eviction if neglected.
At the same time, if the tenant enters into a violation that materially affects health and safety, you must give the tenant a 30-day window of time along with a notice, to resolve this issue. After this time has passed you can file for the tenant’s eviction if the tenant has not resolved the violation, even if they have been paying rent on time.
4.- You have the right to access the property after a 24-hour notice.
As long as you provide your tenant with a 24-hour written notice, you can access the property for inspection or any other purpose that you as a landlord deem reasonable. This can be made in form of the postal service, or even e-mail. We recommend that along with the written notice, a call is placed in order to let the tenant know a notice has been sent, this way it’s impossible for them to claim to have missed reading the e-mail or the document in paper. It’s important as a landlord though, to avoid entering in any behaviour that could be considered intimidation – as this is not permitted by the law. This becomes even more important for delicate situations in which the relations with the tenant have already deteriorated for other reasons or when an eviction process has been set in place and there is tension between both parties.
You can also access the property without notice if you believe as a landlord that an emergency-type of situation exists (a gas or water leak), and proof needs to be presented in relation to this emergency, in order for it not to be a violation.
5.- You have the right to get your property back in the state you delivered it to the tenant
This pretty much holds up for every aspect of the property EXCEPT for what we know as “ordinary wear and tear”. We will speak more thoroughly about this aspect on a different post, but it’s basically really unclearly defined by the law. In order to counter this ambiguity, we have a very detailed process in which we take photos and videos; then we present potential percentage values of responsibility for both tenant and landlord, and we keep these open for negotiation – usually starting high and leaning towards the landlord’s favor and negotiating from there while making value judgements.
Our aim is to keep this out of court, but if you do wish to take it there, it’s important to consider that if your claim as a landlord doesn’t hold up and you lose, you will end up paying double the value of the tenant’s security deposit -hence why we try to negotiate out of court and try to keep it reasonable for both parties.
6.- Other rights
Just by owning the property, you’re pretty much entitled to a whole bundle of other rights, and you transfer some of these to the tenant, when entering into a lease agreement. For example, as a landlord, you never transfer your rights to your property’s title and deed through the agreement. The only thing you transfer from yourself to the tenant is the right of access for the period to the lease. You keep this right to a certain extent, but as we mentioned before, there are limitations.
This is just one example of those additional rights, and we consider that it’s important for you to be familiar with at least the most important ones, but if you’d like to inform yourself on the details on the rest we offer you a link to the document “Tenant/Landlord Rights and Obligations”, this is a pamphlet provided by the Ohio Bar Association. The link is below.
