How do I draft lease agreements with no attorney?

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Hey BiggerPockets community,

I am helping other investors in real estate and have been asked the question many times about how to draft the proper lease agreement in residential and commercial real estate without an attorney. Being as frugal as possible, since there are no standard lease agreements, we are googling lease agreements and printing off generic ones online. Would you guys recommend doing this another way or have any feedback regarding this situation? Interested to hear anyones input about this.

[Richard F.]

Aloha,

As a "new agent", you need to be extremely careful. You can run into trouble "practicing law" without a law license. Agents primarily are perfectly fine, "filling in the blanks" of pre-existing documents; and drafting simple Rental Agreement amendments such as basic renewal letters. But creating an entirely new Rental or Purchase/Sales Agreement can get you in hot water, and cost you your newly acquired license.

You should have standard, RE Board approved documents available to you if you are a NAR or local RE Board member. Aside from that, you should advise your Clients to have a RE Attorney review anything they draft as a template for re-use or a single use agreement.

You can also suggest the DO source multiple documents from different sources; review and highlight portions they like/dislike, then meet and review with an Attorney to draft a final document for their template, that will meet all CURRENT local LL/Tenant laws. They will need to monitor changes in those laws as time passes, and make necessary adjustments.