text: Did you sign an occupancy affidavit at the closing?\n\nDo not use a "free" rental agreement or one of those standard forms from Staples or whatever.  I could tell you hundreds of horror stories from people who used those agreements and screwed themself royally.  Same thing with deciding to be a landlord when you know absolutely nothing about it.\n\nDo yourself a great big favor.  Make an appointment with the top landlord/tenant lawyer in your area.  Make sure that is their specialty.  Pay them to do a lease that is specific for your area and your needs.  Have them give you a crash course on local landlord/tenant law and how it applies to you and your proposed situation.  The $100 to $200 it costs you now could save you thousands and thousands in the end.\n\nA true horror story from my office:\n\nWoman rents out her condo when she is transferred.  She buys a "legal" lease from one of those landlord sites and uses it.  A year later, she decides to sell the condo and make some serious money while the market is hot.  This way she can buy a new place where she now lives, pay cash and have a huge chunk of change left over.\n\nShe gives the tenants 30 days notice a month before their lease is up.  The tenants say they aren't going anywhere.  So, she comes to our office to evict them.  We tell her "Sorry, but your tenant doesn't ever have to leave if they don't want to as long as they pay their rent because 1) in this county, if you rent a condo to someone, it must state in big bold letters at the top that it is a condo and subject to sale or else you are required to give them a 2 YEAR notice if you are ending their tenancy if you want to sell the place, 2) leases in this state automatically renew themselves on a month to month basis and you don't have a right to evict simply because a lease is ending under the anti-eviction act of this state and 3) this $9.99 bargain of a lease does not contain the all-important "right of re-entry" clause needed in order to evict for cause in this state, so the fact that you didn't tell them in the lease that it is a condo doesn't even really matter at this point.  They don't ever have to leave even if they did give you cause to evict."\n\nShe's hysterical because prices more than doubled in the past year.  Her 150K condo is under contract for 320K, and now she can't sell it because of this.  She wants to sue the online landlord site because they told her the lease is "perfectly legal".  We have to tell her she doesn't have a case because ... the lease is perfectly legal, it's just not in her best interests. \n\nDon't be a schmuck over $100 to $200.  Pay a professional for their expertise and advice.