Need help with wording - Landlord Forum thread 321892

Need help with wording by Jason (VA) on July 27, 2014 @19:26

My lease currently has the following wording:

TELEPHONE Tenant agrees to maintain a telephone in the dwelling during the term of this lease, and to furnish Owner or agent with the telephone number within five (5) days from taking occupancy. Tenant shall be responsible for any telephone company installation charges, if applicable.

I feel this section is a bit antiquated (I don't even have a landline in my house). However, I would like it to require the tenant have a working telephone, such as a cell phone. How could I word this properly?

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Re: Need help with wording by Bill on July 27, 2014 @19:48	[ Reply ]

I do not know how you would be able to enforce a requirement like that. But you can take some comfort that these days a cell phone is given the same priority as beer and cigarettes.

Re: Need help with wording by Garry (Iowa) on July 27, 2014 @20:29	[ Reply ]

You are so right. Its an old and outdated part of your lease and can be crossed out since 98% of adults have some kind of phone nowdays. Besides what happens if you rent to them for a year, and they are great Ts.-------They take care of your place and pay the rent on time. Then perhaps they come upon some financial problems, and choose to keep paying you rent, but loose their phone service. Are you going to ask them to leave because of no phone ?? I doubt it. Just take it out of your lease and be done with it.

Re: Need help with wording by Stan (NY, NY) on July 27, 2014 @20:29	[ Reply ]

This is an excellent clause for elderly tenants even if you might consider it antiquated. The new generation doesn't even know what a "land line" is, but can actually save lives like my own. You can not always rely on cell phone signals and some areas have very weak signals, so if you needed emergency help, wouldn't you want a land line? Wouldn't you want your tenants to be able to call the fire dept if your house was burning? Consider this: You house is burned down to the ground and your tenants finally call you to say they WOULD HAVE called the fire dept, but couldn't get a signal. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty dumb for not enforcing that clause.

Re: Need help with wording by James on July 27, 2014 @20:31	[ Reply ]

Well said, Stan. Thanks for sharing a different point of view!

Re: Need help with wording by Jack Klein (NY) on July 27, 2014 @20:41	[ Reply ]

Stan the man gets it! What will it hurt for you to leave it in the lease? I ask my tenants to keep an active hard wired line in my houses. So far it hasn't been a problem. Then again, it may have something to do with the fact that most of my tenants are well to do families, and many of them are former homeowners.

Re: Need help with wording by Kim (WV) on July 27, 2014 @23:37	[ Reply ]

I agree with Stan; he makes an excellent point. That said, I don't require the tenants to have a landline because all my rental properties are in town and the cell phone service in the area is always good. This is how I word the requirement in my lease: "TELEPHONE AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS Tenant agrees to maintain a telephone during the term of this lease, and to furnish Owner or agent with the telephone number within five (5) days from taking occupancy. Tenant shall be responsible for any telephone company installation charges, if applicable." So they can use cell phones and not have a landline if that's what they chose. I don't think any of my current or past tenants (only been doing this for 2 years) have had a landline. But the houses all still have the wiring and boxes for a the landlines if folks want to get one. We currently have a landline for our house and cell phones for each family member. About the only use the landline gets is when one of us loses track of our cell phone, then we use the landline phone to locate the cell phone! Still the landline is useful in an emergency. We even have an old rotary phone that will work if we lose electrical power.

Re: Need help with wording by Anonymous on July 28, 2014 @03:16	[ Reply ]

What is the purpose of making your tenants have a phone, land line or cell? To make it easier for you to contact them? They don't have to answer the phone if they don't want to. So that they will have a phone to call the fire department if the house catches fire? They might not be at home when the fire starts. The clause is not just outdated, it's illegal. You also can't require a person have electricity, water or other utilities. You know why? Because you cannot make a person engage in commerce.

Re: Need help with wording

Re: Need help with wording by anonymous on July 28, 2014 @11:47	[ Reply ]

You have to provide at least one telephone jack in the house. They use it if they want. You can require contact phones for home and work (on the application). Nowadays home numbers are commonly cell numbers.

Re: Need help with wording by Anonymous on July 28, 2014 @12:48	[ Reply ]

Mine says that too and I did not change it. When going over the lease, I just explain that we need a working phone number to get in contact with them, doesn't matter if its a cell or landline. People may interpret that to mean landline but it doesn't specifically say landline, just that the phone has to be in the home. Maybe you could change it to "Tenant agrees to maintain active telephone service during the term of this lease, and to furnish Owner or agent with the telephone number within five (5) days from taking occupancy. Tenant shall be responsible for any telephone company charges." They WILL have phone charges (not just "if applicable") so you want to make sure they understand maintaining working phone service is a requirement at their expense, and they need to keep you updated with a phone number at all times.