As you know, TAA did away with the Lease Renewal Form in August 2019.
We’ve heard your frustration with that decision.
The consensus of landlord/tenant attorneys and TAA’s Executive Committee is that industry best practice is to execute a new lease. In addition to keep members from renewing old leases that would be out of compliance with the new law(s).
With that said, self made renewal forms are emerging. And while that is not an invalid form to create and attach to your lease, it is highly discouraged. We explored this with a landlord/tenant attorney on your behalf. The following are things to seriously consider.
In House Renewal Forms
There are multiple issues with using a Lease Renewal Form that are extremely problematic for a landlord; I have advised all of my clients to never use a renewal form as the current TAA Lease version, in my opinion, should always be used for the following reasons:
First, using a “Renewal Form” requires care in completing it properly; if the renewal form is not accurately filled out, it is problematic for the Landlord and creates an enforceability problem because it must “refer back” to the original lease accurately and have the same parties to the contract – I have seen too many times a renewal form being used to add or drop a party and that is not appropriate because the new party is not subject to the original contract to which they did not agree. Additionally, if there is a change in ownership during the pendency of the original lease or the pendency of the term of the renewal and a renewal is no longer accurate, there can be a proof issue at trial.
Second is that in order to prove up an eviction in eviction court, the Landlord must introduce and have admitted by the Judge two forms instead of one; the original Lease and the renewal. If both forms are not properly proven up in eviction court, the Landlord has a good likelihood of losing the case as the landlord has not proven the superior right of possession.
Third is that a renewal form never captures any changes in the law that may have occurred since the original lease was signed and if there is, for instance, a change mid-year like we had several years ago regarding the maximum late fee that could be charged, the landlord using a renewal form that isn’t kept up to date can run afoul of the law because it isn’t up to date. A while back, there were two lease revisions by TAA within three months because of changes in the law.
Finally, if a landlord is going to use their own proprietary renewal form, they need to be certain that they are constantly monitoring changes in the law that make the original lease out or renewal out of compliance and to be sure that the provisions of the renewal form stay current.
R. David Fritsche
Law Office of R. David Fritsche
Side note to those that use the TAA Click & Lease. The expense of executing a new lease no longer applies, as it did when “clicks” were purchased in quantity blocks.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact our office.
