Can I change provision for month to month lease?

[Robin Evans]

Hi BP friends we just closed on a 4-unit mixed use property (super excited!)and inherited three units' tenants. One tenant's one-year lease is up but a new lease is not signed previously so she is on month to month now. But there is nothing mentioned in lease on where to park other than 2 cars are allowed for her. Our questions: 1. Can we sign a new lease with her now? If we can, do we have to honor all the provisions in the old lease?  2. Can we add parking rules that we are going to designate a specific parking spot to each tenant? 3. For the one-year lease tenant, do we need to resign a lease with her with old provisions?  Or can we sign a new lease with our own provisions?  Thank you in advance for any input! 

[JD Martin]

1. Yes. If she's on month to month you can require her to sign a new lease or terminate her M2M tenancy.

2. No. You can put anything in the new lease that's not against the law, but that's no guarantee she will sign it. Then you might be back to #1.

3. Yes. See #2

4. No. You can do anything you want with a new lease once the old lease is up. Follow the terms for providing notice on the old lease in case it automatically kicks to a new one-year lease (rare) or M2M lease (common). Then have them sign the new lease. 

In all of this, unless you are severely under market rates, you should prepare for the possibility of losing one or more tenants. If they are grossly under market, this might not be a bad thing. Personally, I'm not a fan of leases greater than M2M once the initial lease is up (we give our new tenants a 1-year). We'll sign a new one with an existing tenant if they were a great tenant and want another fixed lease, but 95% of our tenants just go M2M once their lease is up.