What fees work well in your lease

[Lewis A.]

Most of us charge fees/penalties in our leases. The normal late fees, application fees etc. Can you mention what other fees have worked well for you please?

Some ideas to start the conversation.

We email our tenants all notices and they agree to that method of communication in their lease. If they do not acknowledge a notice in a set period of time the notice is attached to their door, we are exploring adding a penalty fee for this in the lease to compensate administrative costs.

We very rarely pay utilities on behalf of a tenant, when we do, we charge that amount to their invoice at no additional cost. We are thinking of adding a 10% charge to those utility bills.

We have considered court fees for a while. We go to court ourselves and are considering adding a penalty/fee for this as it requires preparation and a large part of our day.

I know this can all be dependent on state but I would like to know what has worked well for you please.