Buying first property with existing tenants in place..

[Taylor Green]

Hi, I am about to close on my first rental property and it has a tenant under lease until Jan. 2015. My questions are: 1) do I have to write a new lease agreement or can the existing agreement stay in place. 2) can the rent checks be made out to my company even though i purchased the home under my own name. 3) if i can keep the same lease, do i need to present them with a document, or just inform them of where to send the check? 4)do I have to register the property with county or anything along those lines? Thanks...

[Shaun Reilly]

Also One word of caution on the lease stuff.

I have never heard of any state where the lease does not follow the property and when you buy an occupied rental you bought that lease as well. If you just want to have them sign a lease that has all the same terms but just on "your" paperwork and with the updated contact information for payments and repairs then you should be fine.

IF you change any other terms I would make sure that they also sign something acknowledging that both parties of the previous contract willingly nullified it and entered into this new agreement.

At least in my tenant friendly state I would be scared out of my mind if a tenant brought me to court with a defense that I tricked them into signing a new lease with new more favorable terms and that they had the original one to prove it.

I WOULD lose and would have to pay triple damages on whatever they claimed I screwed them out of.