Lease Renewal (Rhode Island) - Online Template and/or Lawyer?

[Aheli P.]

We are coming up on our first lease renewal for our current house hack in Providence. The previous landlord was a bit disorganized (two different leases, lease terms, rules for the two inherited tenants). We'd like to create a standard lease to use on this property and our future RI properties. We like the Bigger Pockets RI Lease, but would love to hear feedback about your experiences using online templates versus going through a legal route? We also think we're changing to a month to month lease, so would welcome feedback on any "gotchas" that have come up. 

Thanks so much in advance! 

[Anthony Thompson]

@Aheli P. I usually do recommend month to month over one year leases, especially these days with the eviction moratorium, proposed legislation making evictions more difficult, etc.

In many cases it’s easier to get someone out if the lease has been terminated and they refuse to leave, than if the lease is still in effect and they just haven’t paid or (even worse) if you’re trying to get them out for a reason other than nonpayment (e.g., disturbing other tenants).

As far as a specific lease, I haven’t used the Bigger Pockets RI lease, but my usual recommendation is that people either get their lease from, or get the lease they plan to use approved by, the attorney they’d use for any evictions.

After all, if you end up in court then the attorney is going to have to show the lease to the judge so you want to know ahead of time that it has the right clauses (e.g., awarding attorney fees to the prevailing party) and that it doesn’t have anything that will cause any problems (e.g., an excessive security deposit that exceeds the maximum allowed by law).

As far as any “gotchas”, that eviction attorney is the one to ask because any attorney that has done evictions more than a handful of times has definitely seen their share of “gotchas” come out in court.